


Nor Iron Bars a Cage

by Chronicler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: :-), A Kind of Love, Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Prison, Amusing myself with tags, Anal, Anal Fingering, Anal Gaping, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Angst and Romance, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Barebacking, Begging, Bestiality, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Biting, Blood, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Bloodshed, Body Horror, Body Image, Body Modification, Body Part Kinks, Body Worship, Bondage and Discipline, Boys In Love, British, British English, British Slang, Bullying, Butt Plugs, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Castration, Choking, Consent Issues, Control, Control Issues, Corporal Punishment, Creampie, Crimes & Criminals, Cutting, Daddy Issues, Declarations Of Love, Dirty Talk, Dogs, Dom/sub, Domestic Discipline, Domestic Disputes, Domestic Violence, Dominance, Double Anal Penetration, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in One Hole, Drug Use, Drugs, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Endearments, Extremely Dubious Consent, Falling In Love, Fate, Fate & Destiny, Fetish, Filthy, First Love, Food Issues, Food Kink, Forbidden, Forbidden Love, Forced, Forced Crossdressing, Forced Feminization, Forced Orgasm, Forced Prostitution, Forced Relationship, Foreskin Play, Fucked Up, Gang Bang, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Genderfuck, Genderplay, Genital Torture, Group Sex, Gun Violence, Hate to Love, Horror, Humiliation, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I made a montage, I'm Going to Hell, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Incest, Imprisonment, Kinda, Knifeplay, Knotting, Licking, Loss of Identity, Love, Love & Hate, Love at First Sight, M/M, Madness, Manipulation, Marking, Master/Slave, Mental Anguish, Mental Coercion, Mental Disintegration, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Might involve ears, Mind Rape, Movie Quotation(s), Movie References, Murder, Mutilation, Name Changes, Nipple Licking, Nipple Play, Nipples, Non-Consensual Body Modification, On the Run, One True Pairing, Oral Sex, Organized Crime, Orgasm Control, Original Character(s), Ownership, POV Bisexual Character, Pain, Painful Sex, Painplay, Pansexual Character, Past Drug Use, Past Underage, Personality Disorders, Pet Names, Physical Abuse, Poetry Quote, Poor Reek, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Prison, Prison Sex, Promiscuity, Pronoun Experimentation, Prostate Massage, Prostate Milking, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Psychopaths In Love, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Ramsay is his own warning, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recreational Drug Use, References to Drugs, Revenge, Rimming, Romance, Rough Sex, S&M, Scene from Reservoir Dogs, Scent Kink, Scent Marking, Scents & Smells, Self-Harm, Serial Killers, Sex in a Car, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Smoking, Sorry Not Sorry, Spitroasting, Strangulation, Submission, Suffering, Tag All The Tags, Tattoos, That Last One Really Is A Tag, There Are No Tags That Adequately Sum Up The Level Of Kink In This, Threats, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture, Transformation, True Love, Twisted love, Unsafe Sex, Verbal Abuse, Verbal Humiliation, Violence, What Have I Done, Whipping, Yorkshire dialect, almost, amateur surgery, cathater, consensual body modification, cum dump, i realise i'm a sick fuck, it has a plot I swear, music references, offensive language, prison bitch, surrender, taxi driver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:51:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ramsay Bolton is bored, and when he’s bored bad shit happens. Incarcerated in Oakwood Hall, Her Majesty’s Young Offenders Institution, he’s looking for something to fill his days, and his nights. He finds it in new prisoner Theon Greyjoy.</p><p>Roose Bolton, Ramsay’s father, instructs him to find out from Theon about his foster family, the Starks. The Boltons have a hand in every shady underworld operation in the North. Unfortunately, their rivals the Starks are pushing across the moors and encroaching into their territory.</p><p>But all Ramsay really cares about is making sure that Theon belongs to him. Except, <i>Theon<i></i></i>, that’s a boring name. <i>Reek<i></i></i>, now that has a nice ring to it. <i>Reek<i></i></i>, it rhymes with <i>shriek<i></i></i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nor Iron Bars a Cage

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: I really can’t overstate the level of kink, triggers, and violence in this. Please don't read it if it might upset you, I don’t want to traumatise anyone. Though I don’t want to spoil what happens by using specific warnings. Feedback and constructive criticism would be gratefully received, but I already know what a sick fuck I am. And I need to work on chapters. And plots.
> 
> I used my working class Yorkshire dialect, because I wanted to practice writing it, the North of Westeros is basically Yorkshire, and it’s set in the modern day.
> 
> 8.8.18: I just edited the entire story yet again and changed the last line. I hope I got all the mistakes. Feel free to tell me any I missed. Or tell me what to work on. I just want to learn. I just noticed I didn't add my work skin, so it didn't have en-dashes. It will look better if you leave it on. I also just found out that stammered speech should be punctuated with hyphens, not en-dashes, so I'm about to go through the entire story and fix it...
> 
> Partly inspired by Doublebit’s great story Reformed on AO3, though I don’t know them and they should in no way be blamed for this story.
> 
> Thanks to Matty for beta reading even though it isn’t their fandom. I blame them for some of the content.
> 
> This is probably annoying, but it has theme songs!
> 
> Ramsay’s theme: Katie Lee - Stay as Sick as You Are:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiZ8jbFhmds 
> 
> Theon’s theme: Arctic monkeys - You know I’m no good:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H3MieEZx4w
> 
> Their joint theme: My Chemical Romance - You Know What They do to Guys Like us in Prison:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8omHUHK4iXc
> 
> Poem I used at the start and took the title from: Richard Lovelace - To Althea, from Prison:
> 
> https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44657

_Stone Walls do not a Prison make,_  
_Nor Iron bars a Cage;_  
_Minds innocent and quiet take_  
_That for an Hermitage._  
_If I have freedom in my Love,_  
_And in my soul am free,_  
_Angels alone that soar above,_  
_Enjoy such Liberty._

_~ Richard Lovelace_

###

Grey. Everything was always grey. The walls were grey, the sky was grey, and his shitty clothes, already worn by countless other sweaty boys, were grey.

Ramsay lay on an ancient leather couch pushed against the wall in the wide corridor that ran between cells. His hands crossed over his stomach, he looked down the open space and out the barred window at the end of the wing.

Outside, the grey Yorkshire sky had opened and a sheet of grey water battered down on the earth. It slammed onto the mud, the scraggly grass, the gnarled old trees, and the grey concrete of the car park. It sounded like a thousand fingers in the distance tapping against the glass, against the roof, against the walls.

Except who would want to get inside? Oakwood Hall, Her fucking Majesty’s Young Offender Institution, was a shithole. No one wanted to get inside. They wanted to get _out_.

The fingers of one of Ramsay’s hands tapped out a ceaseless rhythm on the back of the other, the only outward sign of how coiled tight he was. His fingers itched to reach for a fag, but they were only allowed to smoke in their cells, and it wasn’t worth the hassle.

He needed something to distract him from the grey. Needed some colour. Needed some –

‘ _– get the fuck off me! I’m not –_ ’ someone yelled at the other end of the corridor, the end that led to where prisoners were booked in and out, poked and prodded, their bodies and their psyches.

With a lighting fast movement, Ramsay was on his knees looking over the arm of the sofa, watching a skinny young man being wrestled to the ground by black uniformed guards.

The other prisoners put down snooker cues and abandoned raucous games of table football in a row down the corridor. They all turned to watch too, gathered together and talking in hushed voices.

One of the guards, chest puffed out, came to stand between them and the new arrival. ‘Anyone who moves can join him in solitary!’ he barked out.

Ramsay’s lips puckered together as he suppressed a laugh. As if he were scared of a guard. But he wanted to stay and watch. Watch the young man sprawled on the ground, on his front now, still yelling, ‘No! Don’t touch me, don’t –!’ while he struggled. Dripping wet from the rain, his ugly polyester shirt stuck to his back, and his frayed, striped tie spread out at his side.

‘Stay Still!’ a guard yelled as she pushed a black trousered knee against his arse and twisted his arm behind his back.

He screamed out in pain, quick and sharp.

Lank wet strands of cheap, peroxide blond hair falling over his face, he tried to throw off the guards holding him down. But he was nothing, pale and tinged blue from the cold, he flopped like a newly caught fish suffocating on dry land.

A baton landed against his rib cage, all the breath left his body with an ‘ _Oomph_ ,’ and he stilled, cheek pressed to the dingy tiles.

Then, as orders were yelled, he was dragged to his feet and marched, stumbling down the cell block.

Just for a moment, as he passed, his eyes locked with Ramsay’s.

Eyes the colour of the sea.

And the world disappeared into stillness and silence.

Turning to watch as he was led away, Ramsay smiled.

Things were looking up.

###

Almost a week had passed since the new arrival was dragged off to solitary. A week of tedious boredom for Ramsay as he tried to keep himself amused, and waited. Waited for another chance to watch that lithe, lanky body.

Each night he’d gotten himself off thinking about how it had looked, struggling while it was restrained.

He wondered if its bruises had faded yet. He hoped not.

His lips quirked at the thought of the new inmate as _it_ – aye, _it_ , he liked that, he liked that very much. It was just a thing, a pretty little thing.

‘Still got blue balls till they throw that fresh meat back in here?’ Maze asked, coming into Ramsay’s cell. Bigger than Ramsay, taller and broader, his tattooed biceps bulged out of one of the ratty old white T-shirts they all wore.

‘Fuck off,’ Ramsay answered from where he lay on the lower bunk.

Maze grinned, but kept well back while Ramsay sat up and put his bare feet on the cold ground, hands gripping his bunk’s metal edge.

‘Don’t try front me, I’ve seen you watching out for him every day.’ When Ramsay rose to his feet, Maze held his hands up, palms facing forwards. ‘C’mon, mate, I’m just screwing with ya. I got news anyway: he an’t been in solitary.’

‘No? Where’s it been then?’

‘It?’

‘Yeah, _it_ , like you said it’s just _meat_.’

‘Whatevs. Anyway, ya did know who I meant, then? What’s it worth to ya?’ As Ramsay took a step forwards Maze took a step back, colliding with the wall. Talking fast, he carried on: ‘They’ve got him in Healthcare wing on suicide watch.’

‘Yeah? When’s it getting out?’

‘Today, according to Aminah, that pretty nurse they got with the headscarf thing.’

‘It try top itsen?’

‘Dunno. Sounds like a bit of a nutcase, though. They keep calling him "vulnerable", was gonna put him in VP wing but it’s full, so he’s taking his chances with us.’

‘Know what it’s in for?’

‘Nah, but I can find out. What do I get for it?’

Ramsay smiled, focusing all of his considerable attention on Maze. ‘You won’t wake up and find your bollocks cut off and stuffed in your fucking mouth.’

‘Yeah, right, whatevs,’ Maze muttered, but he pulled away from the wall sharpish and hurried out of the cell calling back: ‘I’ll let ya know what I find out!’

Stretching, Ramsay yawned. He pulled on his socks and trainers, and a faded grey sweatshirt that matched his faded grey tracky bottoms.

That morning, he’d washed and dressed before he ate the cardboard-like cornflakes from his breakfast pack, but there hadn’t been any point doing much else. But now he shaved off his stubble; pulled a comb through his chaotic mass of short black curls; brushed his teeth; rolled on some extra deodorant; then stood with his hands planted at each side of the stainless steel sink at the end of his bunk.

He’d been awake all the night before, and watched Taxi Driver on the shit TV on his desk until it turned off at eleven. ‘Ya talkin’ to me?’ he said to his reflection with a lift of his chin as he imagined himself the next Travis Bickle. He pointed to his chest. ‘I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? You talkin’ to me?’

 _Yeah_ , he thought as he grinned, _yeah, come talk to me, pretty boy._

###

The afternoon dragged by in the spray of sparks and sawdust of the vocational class Ramsay was forced to attend. But at least they let him handle the tools, beating with the hammer and slicing with the saw.

He got back to his wing in time for association, prisoners milling around the corridor and the landing above.

And there it was, the new fish straight off the boat, leaning awkwardly against the patchily limewashed grey wall between cell doors, looking nervous. Its eyes darted around at the smirking faces checking it out.

Plastering on his widest, most ingratiating smile, Ramsay made his way over.

‘I’m Ramsay – Ramsay Snow. You look new. And lost. Need showing what to do? And showing around this dump?’ he asked, gesturing wide with his hands. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and shook one loose, holding the pack out. ‘Want a fag?’

The fresh new fish just looked at him for a moment, its eyes watery pale. Up close, it had blond stubble, but the roots of its bad dye job were brown. Tracky bottoms clung halfway down its hips, nipples poking at its loose T-shirt in the early spring thaw. It was Ramsay’s height and age, but still had a softness, a hint of innocence under the cockiness that Ramsay wanted to dig out. And the scars littered across its arms showed it had already trained itself to endure pain, and take comfort in it.

‘Nah, mate, I’m good.’ It lifted its chin, puffed out its skinny chest, and Ramsay suppressed a laugh.

Instead he shrugged, said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and made his way back to his cell, tension settling in his back.

This was going to take more planning.

###

‘Just back off!’ the new fish shouted: Theon Greyjoy apparently, according to Maze. Except it wasn’t grey at all, it was a splash of colour. And Ramsay smiled at the irony of the name as he watched events unfolding below. He was standing up on the floor above his wing, arms folded on the railing, looking down through the silver mesh of the suicide net.

Below, Maze had Theon’s chest pressed up against a wall with its arm twisted behind its back, and the smile slipped from Ramsay’s face, his jaw clenching as Maze ground himself against Theon and the other cons gathered around laughed and sniggered.

‘Yeah, that’s it, just like that!’ Maze called. ‘Bet you’ll suck us all off for a pack of fags!’

Ramsay had wanted to wait till more bruises bloomed on that pale skin, but no one was getting to tap that arse before he did.

Moving with a measured deliberateness, he made his way down the open metal stairs then led, suspended in the air, to the ground. Each footstep clanged and mixed with the yelling below.

‘– and don’t fucking touch me! I’m not some bumboy, get your fucking hands off me or I’ll –’

Whatever empty threat Theon was going to make was interrupted when Ramsay arrived on the scene.

‘What’s going on here, lads?’ he said with a smile, spreading his arms wide.

Maze let go of the T-shirt balled in his fist and stepped back. His eyes shifted around at the other inmates, his obvious panic growing as they shuffled away. ‘Nowt, Ramsay, we was just saying hiya to the fresh meat, like you – _oomph_ ,’ all the air left him as Ramsay’s fist collided with his gut.

With another thud Maze hit the floor as Ramsay pummelled into him with the satisfying feeling under his knuckles of skin and muscle and bone taking a battering and the squelch as it gave.

‘Everyone back off!’ a gruff, older voice yelled, as hands closed on Ramsay, body taught and still trying to lay into Maze as he was pulled back, landing a kick as he went.

He held his hands up as a swarm of black clothed guards descended on them.

As his wrists were pulled behind his back before he was led away, Ramsay’s gaze locked on Theon’s.

Wide eyed, it stared open-mouthed, a trickle of blood running down its chin.

Ramsay grinned.

###

Prowling back and forth in the isolation block, Ramsay examined his knuckles. The bandages the medic had wrapped around them lay strewn across the floor, a bloody mess to go with the stench of shit and desperation that permeated the cell.

His skin was a bit torn and ragged, but nothing too impressive. With a grunt he smashed his fist into the limewashed wall, over and over and over.

Leaving behind a bloody smear as he panted for breath, he examined his throbbing hand, could see a white tease of bone.

That was more like it.

###

‘What did you do this time to end up in solitary?’ Ramsay’s father asked, a hint of annoyance rippling his usually rigidly controlled voice.

‘Nowt,’ Ramsay answered, his bruised hands cradled together on the metal table. ‘How’d you wangle a visit anyway? They shoulda cancelled it.’

‘You should know by now that people do not get to say no to me.’

And silence descended over them. Because yes, yes Ramsay did know perfectly fucking well that Roose Bolton never took no for an answer.

After going out of his mind from days of silence and boredom in solitary, they’d brought Ramsay straight to the visitors’ hall and shoved him into a plastic chair. And there his father had been, waiting and looking royally pissed off.

‘Couldn’t you have at least made an effort?’ his father asked, taking a disapproving look at Ramsay’s stubble and the crumpled clothes he’d been wearing for days.

‘I’m really fucking sorry, but it’s my butler’s day off.’

His father made a sound of disgust and Ramsay looked around the cavernous room, looked at all the other families at the industrial tables. Some clung to each other, some looked like they wanted to be here about as much as he did. A baby’s sharp cry cut through the air and Ramsay took a swig from the polystyrene-tinged coffee his father had brought him from the drinks machine.

‘What?’ he said, releasing his father was speaking.

Eyes as sharp and cutting as glass, his father ground out: ‘I asked if you need anything? I’ve transferred more money into your canteen account, and should you –’

‘I need to get the fuck out of here.’

‘Don’t interrupt me. And my solicitors are working on it.’

‘I’m gonna be twenty-one soon…’

The threat of adult prison hung in the air.

‘If worst comes to worst, you know how to handle yourself.’

A bitter smile spread across Ramsay’s lips. ‘Aye, you made sure of that din’t ya? You made sure that…’

His words faded away when he caught sight of yet another table across the room, and his gaze locked with Theon’s. Its bottom lip was split, but other than that it looked no worse for wear. It fell silent too, just looking back. But Ramsay’s gaze dipped – he couldn’t stop looking at its lips, full and blushed red. Red in the faded, stagnant grey all around them.

And as Theon gazed back, its visitors turned in their seats to look at Ramsay. Two young men, one still a teenager by the looks of it, the other a bit older than Ramsay. Both good looking, solid, dark haired, one with wild curls and one with steady, sky-blue eyes. Ramsay lowered his chin, returned their stares, held them till they looked away.

Even from behind Ramsay could see the elder one’s hands moving, gesturing as he talked. ‘You’re such a fucking slag, Theon!’ he said too loudly and people turned to look, a few of the cons laughing while mothers shook their heads in apparent disapproval. Raising his middle finger at his visitor, Theon didn’t meet Ramsay’s eyes.

A small smile pulling at his lips, Ramsay turned his attention back to his father who cleared his throat and asked, ‘Do you know who that is?’

‘Freshly slaughtered meat,’ Ramsay answered with a smile, returning the intent, piercing look of his Father.

‘Not him. His visitors. They’re the Stark boys.’

‘I don’t give a fuck so long as they’re not his boyfriends.’

His father gave an annoyed sigh, quick and sharp. ‘You need to learn who our rivals are if you’re going to inherit my business one day. You need to pay attention, you need –’

‘I know who the Starks are. They beat you to take over that dodgy booze import ring. But his last name’s Greyjoy, innit?’

‘Keep your voice down. And perhaps, like you, he’s a bastard,’ he paused for a second to let his words hang heavy in the air. ‘However, I doubt it. There is a bastard, one of those boys I think, but I don’t know who it is they’re visiting. Perhaps you can make yourself useful in here, find out who he is.’

Ramsay’s face split into a grin. ‘I intend to.’

Somehow his father’s gaze become even more intent as he leaned forwards. ‘Just find out _information_. You need to learn self-control, we don’t need another “incident” like what happened with the Poole girl.’ He lowered his voice, ‘I barely managed to pay off her parents to quiet them after what you did to her.’

Ramsay’s smile grew at the memory. There had been so much red. ‘Yes, sir.’

###

Ramsay lay in his bunk reading a Joker comic Maze had gotten him before his unfortunate stay in the medical wing – because, seriously, fuck Batman – when he realised he wasn’t alone.

His body tensed and he lowered the comic.

But a smile tugged at his lips when he saw who it was: the fresh meat.

And for a long moment, they just looked at each other, his own ice-grey eyes meeting irises every colour of the ocean.

And he waited. Let the moment spin out till the silence became uncomfortable and the fresh meat started to squirm.

And when it couldn’t stand it anymore, his visitor said, ‘Hey – I wanted to, like, say ta for what you did the other day. When you like… got those guys off me. Fucking twats. You okay?’

Dropping the comic onto his thin mattress, Ramsay flexed his hands. ‘I’ll live.’

‘Good – good…’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Theon. What did you do to end up in here?’ It laughed. ‘That’s so fucking cliché, they always say shit like that in prison movies. But, like, what did ya do?’

‘We don’t ask that in here. We ask what someone got done for, but we’re all innocent, din’t ya know that?’

‘Right, course.’ All awkward angles Theon came further into the cell. Scooting over, Ramsay gestured to the edge of his bunk and Theon sat down. ‘So what – what did ya get done for?’

Ramsay shrugged, taking a second to mull over which answer to give. ‘I was doing a little job for me dad, and I got done for burglary and possessing stolen goods. Nowt too exciting. You?’

‘Just drugs, just, like, possession. Nowt heavy either.’

 _Tut, tut, tut, naughty boy, lying to me,_ Ramsay thought to himself. According to Maze it had been dealing too, class B. But he just smiled and said, ‘Half the guys here are in for drugs. It’s a war, don’t ya know?’

Theon smiled back, looked down at its hands. Its mouth parted as it licked its lips, showing the gaps between its teeth which made it look even younger.

‘How old are you?’ Ramsay asked.

‘Nineteen. You?’

‘Twenty. I’ll be ageing out of this shithole in a few months.’

‘Yeah? What happens then?’

Ramsay shrugged, rumpling the rough, sandy coloured blanket he lay on. ‘Either I go up to adult prison – Wakefield maybe, _Monster Mansion_ – or me dad gets me out.’

‘How would he do that?’

‘Bribe the right people, get the right lawyers, whatever. They almost kept me out in the first place, wanted me to go into a loony bin instead. But I figured it’d be more fun in here with the really rough trade.’

‘What’s wrong with ya?’

‘Personality disorders, so they said.’

‘Like a psychopath?’

‘Aye.’ Ramsay smiled. ‘Like a psychopath.’

Theon laughed. Laughed like it was all a joke. But really, as Ramsay frequently told himself, it was all a joke. A fucking game.

‘I wanted to speak to ya, ’cuz…’ it said, looking on edge, ‘’Cuz everyone’s kinda avoiding me. Well, except that crazy guy – Dook is it? The one with R.I.P. tattooed on his forehead – what kind of psycho does that? He dun’t seem to even know where he is, so I try stay out of his way. But Halim – he’s nice – he told me no one dare talk to me ’cuz I’m “yours” now… But, like, you know I’m not, right?’ And it straightened its spine, pushed back its shoulders.

‘You know why everyone’s afraid of me?’

‘What? No. I –’

‘This place is full of nutters, full of scum, but they all have their limits. But I don’t. I get it,’ and he slipped into the mocking tone that always got him a slap from his father, ‘ _you’re a tough guy, or you’re a pretty little hipster, and –’_

‘What the fuck?!’ Theon said, jumping to its feet, facing Ramsay as he got up too.

‘– _whatever the fuck you are you’re not some little bitch._ ’

He grabbed Theon with both hands either side of his head and backed him up, slamming the back of his skull against the wall. Then leaned in so close he could see every colour in Theon’s indecisive pupils, the blue and green, the hazel of them.

‘But,’ he smashed Theon’s head back against the wall again with a dull crack, ‘you,’ _crack_ , ‘are,’ _crack_ , ‘my,’ _crack_ , ‘little,’ _crack_ , ‘bitch.’

Grinning, Ramsay let go and Theon started to slide down the wall, leaving behind a smear of red on the grey. But as Ramsay stepped back, Theon rallied a little, staggering to the side and fumbling its way out of the cell.

Ramsay let it leave. It’d come back. Where else could it go?

###

Lights out every night at eleven, get up at seven next morning, dinner at twelve, tea at five, lockdown at nine, showers twice a week, cell inspection once a week, strip search whenever the fuck some perv officer felt like it, and blah blah blah. Prison was rules, and Ramsay didn’t like rules. Not unless he made them. If he made them, he liked them just fine.

The rest of the time, in his cell, alone, his idle mind crept up the walls and scratched at his skin to get out.

And, with the turn of the lock, he bolted out. Out into the corridor for association.

‘Where’s the fresh meat?’ he asked, going up to Maze.

Bruised and wary, Maze took a step back. ‘I only got outta medical today, I don’t know owt.’

‘ _Your_ daddy won’t like it if I tell _my_ daddy you’re not being a good little boy and keeping an eye on me.’

A bitter snort escaped Maze before he could reign it in. ‘Like you need protecting.’ He sighed. ‘Fine, whatevs: I saw him head towards the showers. Flick’s crew went after him. He owes ’em money, has been snorting shit he can’t pay for.’

‘Yeah? He’s – _it’s_ – a naughty little thing too then. What’s it into?’

‘Anything he can get his hands on.’

Ramsay held out his hand, beckoned with his fingers. ‘Gimme whatever you’ve got, then come with me.’

They made their way through dingy corridors to the grotty shower block. Ramsay stood outside the half-open door and listened. Listened to the fresh meat begging, such a pretty sound, then thuds and groans.

Listened and waited.

Maze loitered behind him, still clutching at his bruised gut.

Once Ramsay heard quiet sobbing, he burst into the wide open space, the yellowing tiles lit by a fluorescent strip light that flickered over Theon, curled up on the floor, and the two young men standing over it.

‘Well, well, well, welcoming the fresh meat, boys? And you didn’t invite me? You’ve hurt my feelings.’ Ramsay placed his right hand over the left side of his chest.

‘Just fuck off, Snow, this in’t owt to do with ya.’

‘You an’t heard? He’s mine.’

‘I don’t see your brand on him.’

Ramsay smiled. ‘What a lovely idea. Gimme time.’

Flick, his dark skin lost in shadows as he moved closer, said, ‘Din’t ya hear me, psycho? I said to fuck off. We all stay outta your way so we don’t piss off your old man, but this is business. We can’t let your bitch get away with not handing over the readies he owes us, we in’t no charity. Unless you’re gonna pay his debt?’

‘Well, I could… but this is gonna be _way_ more fun.’

And he ran at Flick, ran at him and brought their foreheads together like trains crashing, and the world stuttered, the light exploding from a flicker to a flash.

Everything was fast and jagged after that, splashes of red across grubby tiles, Maze’s grunts in the background as he took on Flick’s henchman whose name Ramsay had never bothered to learn.

The blows pummelling into Ramsay warmed him through, and he laughed when he left Flick collapsed on the ground and held the other guy for Maze to take care of.

‘They gonna get the screws?’ Maze asked while they watched Flick and his lackey stumble out into the hallway. Doubled over holding his gut, Maze gave a wet snort and spat bloody saliva onto the ground.

‘Nah – they know better. No one likes a rat. Now fuck off and wait outside, and keep an eye out in case they send anyone to try finish us off.’

Ramsay didn’t bother to watch Maze shuffle away. He focused his attention on the fresh meat. It had pulled itself to the wall. Sitting against the cracked tiles, it looked up and out of the tiny, barred windows at the top. At the jagged flash of stars beyond branches of trees that hadn’t yet learnt that nothing lived in such a place.

‘You’re bleeding,’ it said when Ramsay knelt down in front of it.

Ramsay put his hand to his face, felt the wetness pouring from his nose.

Going over to the sink, he looked in the mirror. He looked like a bucket of blood had been tipped over his head, and when he smiled his teeth glistened like pink pearls.

He splashed his face, scrubbed at himself with paper towels, made himself presentable enough to get through the corridors. Not that anyone cared.

‘C’mon,’ he said, dragging the fresh meat to its feet. It groaned as Ramsay tilted its head up to look at its injuries. One of its too-big teeth was cracked, the bottom half missing, and a cut beneath its blackening eye bled. ‘Do ya need to see the doc? I don’t want ya to die.’

It shook its head, let Ramsay dab the pretty red from its pale skin with grey paper towels that turned red too.

Ramsay pulled the little plastic bag out of his pocket, shook it in front of Theon’s face. ‘I come bearing gifts.’

It snatched the bag away, and Ramsay watched the white powder turn red as trembling fingers shaped it into a line on the worktop by the sink. Ramsay handed over a fiver, watched Theon snort its present. When the green was handed back, red fingerprints covered it.

‘Told you you’re mine now,’ Ramsay said to the weaving figure as he led it into one of the toilet stalls.

‘Yours,’ it slurred out, its pupils black.

An explosion of shit covered the inside of the toilet bowl, the walls of the cubicle covered in graffiti, meaningless words and tags in black marker and scratched into wood.

‘I can’t,’ Theon muttered in the stench, swaying, as Ramsay leant back against the door and pushed it to its knees.

‘Shut up – just fucking do it before I knock out more of your teeth,’ Ramsay said, pushing down his tracky bottoms and pulling his dick free, already hard, already leaking.

And with a groan, the bleeding meat got its wrecked mouth around the waiting flesh, and Ramsay dug his fingers into cheap, peroxide hair, held it still and fucked into the wet warmth.

Afterwards, it collapsed onto its haunches, scrubbing at its red, sticky lips with the back of its hand.

And, tucking himself away, Ramsay saw, even in the shadows, that his dick was wet with blood. He smiled.

###

‘No, you can’t! I wanna see my welfare officer, I want –’

‘I don’t give a flying fuck what you want. Shut your mouth and settle in,’ the guard answered Theon as she dumped a bulging black bin bag onto the top bunk in Ramsay’s cell. She nodded her head at Ramsay, the green of her eyes meeting the grey of his for a moment. ‘Give my regards to Roose,’ she said, then left, the slam of the door followed by the scraping and click of the lock.

Theon threw himself at the door, banged on it with his fists, yelled, ‘You can’t do this!’ over and over while Ramsay just lay still and watched.

Watched and waited. Waited for the fish to stop flapping around, to stop twitching, to accept it was caught.

Unfurling, Ramsay held onto the edge of the top bunk as he got off his own.

Theon just turned, looking at the floor.

‘You never told me who those guys are that visit you?’ Ramsay asked.

‘What?’ Theon asked, looking up, looking dazed.

‘The pretty boys that come visit ya, who are they?’

‘Me foster brothers.’

‘Names.’

‘Robb and Jon – Robb _Stark_ and Jon _Stark_. They’d slit your throat if they knew the shit that goes on in here.’

‘I’ll look forward to it. And you was in care? No one wants ya? Don’t worry – _I_ want you.’

Theon closed its eyes, took a deep breath.

‘Anyway,’ Ramsay carried on, taking a step closer, ‘your _brother_ called you a slag, it’s a bit late to play the blushing virgin.’

‘That were different! What I did on the outside.’ It opened his eyes, accusing waves of the ocean lapping at Ramsay. ‘I wanted it.’

‘Girls, or boys, or both?’ he asked, stepping so close he could feel the warmth of its breath.

‘Girls mostly…’

‘ _Mostly_. You’re as bent as the rest of us.’

‘How come you don’t sound posh, if your daddy’s so rich he can buy you anything you – _oomph_ ,’ the breath knocked out of it and brushed against Ramsay’s face as he grabbed its throat and backed it up to slam against the metal door.

Ramsay pulled his spine straight, looked down at it as he leant close and took in its scent: the fresh sweat of fear and coconut shampoo.

‘I’m a bastard, Snow’s me mam’s name, I din’t meet me dad till I was ten and me mam cun’t handle us anymore. And yeah, he’s a big deal on the outside, runs a lot of shit out there, has his hands in a lot of pies: protection, cars, prossies, drugs; if it’s hot he’s involved somewhere along the line. But in here it’s just you and me. So you can try smother me when I’m asleep if you’ve got the bollocks for it.’

He reached down and grasped its crotch, it struggled and fuck that felt good. ‘I don’t like being in here on me own, I don’t like the silence, the dark, can’t shut me brain up,’ he added, and it stilled.

‘Me dad wants to know about the Starks,’ Ramsay continued as he let go, turned and moved back towards the bunks. ‘I don’t give a fuck – but you’re gonna tell me everything ya know.’

‘Fuck you, I’m not gonna –’ it started to say and Ramsay was on it so fast its words flitted away to nothing. They scuffled, and it was determined, got in a few lucky hits, but not ruthless, wouldn’t take the final money shot, and ended up underneath Ramsay on the ground, arm twisted behind its back.

‘You’re not very smart are ya,’ Ramsay said, breathing in the scent of its colourless hair. ‘But it’s okay – I like it when they fight back. You know what I’m really in for?’ he added, pulling it to its feet, ‘there was a girl, Jeyne – stupid cunt – tried to say no to me too. No one’ll ever call her pretty again.’ He started to pull at its clothes. ‘So we can either do this the hard way or the easy way. Would you have let me fuck you on the outside? I know I’m fit.’

It stilled. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well then, what’s the problem? Would you rather everyone in here took turns shagging ya, or just me? I can protect you if you’re mine, get you whatever shit you want: get you fags, get you gear, get you loaded, and get you off.’

And for a moment there was silence, silence filled with its warm breaths against his cheek before it whispered. ‘Just you.’

And Ramsay kissed it hard, got it up against the stone-cold wall and got a taste of it, the metallic tang of blood in its mouth.

It was all so easy after that, too easy, to strip it naked and get it down on all fours, while he just pushed his own tracky bottoms down. It whined about Ramsay being too big, too thick, whined about there being no condoms. ‘This in’t the fucking Ritz,’ Ramsay told it. ‘Be grateful I’m slicking you up,’ he said of the oil Maze had nicked from the kitchen when he was on serving duty.

‘ _Fuck –_  ya look just like me dad’s hounds,’ Ramsay said as he took it, leant across its sweat-slick back, ‘my good little bitch.’

And afterwards, when Ramsay collapsed onto his bunk, he left Theon on the floor, its breaths ragged in the air when the lights went out.

It sounded better than silence.

###

‘Why’d you let me have the top bunk?’ Theon asked, sitting at the end of the bottom bunk eating its segmented tray of cottage pie and limp spinach.

Ramsay shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of beef and gravy. ‘I don’t really give a fuck, so long as you don’t wet the bed. We know who’s on top.’

It shovelled more food into its mouth.

‘Tell me more about the Starks,’ Ramsay said. ‘About their operation. How many men they have. How many guns. And if any of ’em ever shagged ya.’

‘They din’t.’ It looked up, looked indignant.

‘Why not?’

‘They was nice to me. But, like,’ it dropped its fork onto its tray with a clatter, ‘I always knew I wan’t really one of ’em.’

‘How’d you end up there anyway?’

‘Me dad used to knock us around, and me uncle Euron did worse, he… It’s fucking weird, talking to you about this shit. Like… like you’re a friend. But you’re not my friend.’

‘Nah – I’m your master.’

Theon started to laugh, but stopped when it took in the deadly serious look for once on Ramsay’s face.

It took its tray, slammed it down on the desk next to the drawers that were the only furniture in the cell other than the bunks. ‘I’ve got to get out of here for a bit, clear me head. I’m meant to be at the basic English class this afternoon anyway. I’ll be back later.’

And it left. Left like it could just come and go as it pleased, even in lock-up, and, worse, even in Ramsay’s cell.

Clearly it hadn’t yet learnt its place.

Late that afternoon, Ramsay went out to association, other prisoners milling around, guards at the edges managing to look both alert and bored. And there it was, brazenly talking to another prisoner. Head bent close. Whispering. The other boy was taller, with dark hair cropped close to his head, his skin a dark brown against Theon’s paleness. Theon put its hand on the boy’s arm and Ramsay’s nails dug into his palms till he drew blood.

He went up to a snooker table, said to Maze, ‘Who is that?’

Maze put down his cue, shared a look with the skinny, ginger haired boy he was playing who then made a sharp exit. ‘Who’s what?’

‘The fucker my property’s talking to.’

Looking over, Maze answered, ‘Halin, I think – no, Halim. He’s harmless, in for joyriding. Likes cars too much, that’s his problem.’

‘Know his cellmate?’

‘Probably, I know everyone, but –’

‘Then have him take care of this.’

‘You can’t just –’

Ramsay turned his intent gaze from watching his property let someone else touch it, to Maze. ‘I can do whatever the fuck I like.’

Maze just closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath and let it out. Then nodded.

And Ramsay went to queue up to collect his tea, slop piled into metal compartments, and Theon stood by his side like it hadn’t done anything wrong. They ate in silence in Ramsay’s cell, and it just looked confused.

They watched TV in silence while Ramsay waited for the graveyard shift guard to close the door and the key to turn in the lock.

And all the time his anger grew and grew till it burnt him up, wound so tight he could snap.

And at half past nine, when the guard was back drinking tea and eating biscuits in the staff room, or whatever the fuck they did at night, the yelling started. The yelling that came every night: threats from one cell to another, of what would come in the morning, and the sobs and screams of prisoners who just couldn’t hack another night locked in darkness and silence. Ramsay turned up the TV, some old black and white war movie on Channel Four blaring out.

He grabbed Theon’s hair and pulled it off its bunk. It hit the cement floor with the dull thud of a sack of potatoes, lay there trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of it. ‘What the fuck?’ it gasped out, ‘ _Shit_ – what was that for, I din’t –’

But Ramsay just grabbed it by its hair again and pulled it over to the desk, bent it over, grabbed its hand and held it down on the table. He pulled out the screwdriver he’d taken from carpentry class and painstakingly sharpened, sharpened, sharpened till its edge gleamed sharp as a knife.

‘ _What are you doing? What –_ ’ it was still saying, as Ramsay brought the edge down as hard as he could at the base of its little finger. And it screamed and screamed and struggled, but Ramsay held tight, brought the tool down over and over, screaming back, ‘Don’t forget who you fucking belong to! You _ever_ walk out on me, you ever let anyone else touch you, you ever talk to me like that again, and I’ll cut out your fucking tongue!’

And blood splattered against his face as he spent his rage, hacked and hacked with his shitty blade till bone splintered and there was nothing left but a pulpy mess.

It collapsed to its knees by Ramsay’s side, its free hand grasping at Ramsay’s trousers.

Ramsay grabbed a ratty old towel and wrapped it around the stump, around its hand. ‘Keep this on till morning, then go to the medical wing. Tell ’em you caught it in a door. Shame there’s nowhere to cook it in here,’ he said, holding the severed pinkie. He wrapped it in toilet roll and flushed it down the stainless steel toilet next to the sink. It swirled and bobbed, took a few attempts to disappear.

Pale as the towel wrapped around its hand that was slowly turning red, Theon sat curled up against the desk, sobbing quietly, its cheeks wet with tears and its nose running.

‘You have to learn, pet,’ Ramsay said, stroking its hair back from its face.

Then Ramsay climbed into his bunk, and, exhausted, went to sleep.

The next day at association, Theon stood quietly by Ramsay’s side, cradling its bandaged hand. And when Maze came over and, without looking at it, said, ‘Halim – that paki you asked about – he hung hissen last night in his cell. Just cun’t hack it in here,’ it closed its eyes and didn’t say a word.

###

Blood running down his face, and wearing nothing but tracky bottoms with bloodied white bandages binding his fists, Ramsay grinned and flung himself forwards at Dook.

A circle around them of prisoners and guards catcalled and yelled, money and cigarettes exchanging hands.

Biting Dook’s shoulder, Ramsay growled, took a punch to the gut, but kept going, kept going till Dook was a heap on the floor, his only movement the hitching rise and fall of his ribcage.

When Ramsay pulled Theon into their cell afterwards, he pushed it against the wall, licked its throat as he took in its scent. ‘You smell like soap – fuck that. And I don’t like the other little shits in this place seeing you naked.’ He grabbed its hand and pulled it towards the bunks. ‘You don’t shower anymore, you got me?’

‘I can’t just –’

He shoved it back so its shoulders hit the top bunk, grabbed its chin and pushed its head back. ‘You can do whatever the fuck I tell you to.’

He guided it down onto the bottom bunk, smiling as he pushed up its T-shirt, admired the litany of scars he’d left crisscrossing the patchwork of its chest. Like an artist he traced each one, remembered how he put it there: screwdriver, razor, broken glass, shattered mirror, his teeth, his nails, the new shank he’d made…

Straddling it, the sagging mesh of the bunk above him, he ran his fingers over its nipples. They hardened under his touch and its hips bucked up. Around a smirk he said, ‘Robb was right, you are a slag. What the fuck’s this meant to be on your chest? I just thought it were a squiggle, but it kinda makes a shape if ya squint.’ His fingertips traced the inked, wavy black lines.

‘It’s a kraken.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Like, a sea creature. They’re not real though.’

‘You afraid of the _real_ monsters now?’

‘Yeah – yeah I am.’

‘This is shit work though, who did it?’

‘Jon – he’d just signed up for the army, and he thought that he’d look butcher with tats so he did all three of us, but it didn’t work out for him there anyway, and –’

Ramsay wrapped his hand around its throat, leaned down close. ‘I don’t wanna hear about you getting your tits out with other shitty little boys. You know who you belong to now?’

It winced as it swallowed against Ramsay’s hand. He just gripped tighter. ‘Yeah – yeah, I know.’

‘You know what?’

‘I know who I belong to.’

‘Good boy. Maze’ll give ya summat better for some fags – “Property of Ramsay Snow” on your arse maybe. He just needs a needle and some ink. He says it hurts like fuck.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll set it up.’

‘Yes, sir,’ it answered, with no expression and eyes fixed on nothing.

###

Laughter followed them as they made their way across the yard. An inmate, who barely looked old enough to be inside, snorted like a pig and called, ‘Ya stink like a hog, not like a _bitch,_ Greyjoy!’

‘ _Shit_ ,’ Theon mumbled at the ground, while Ramsay smiled to himself. The tarmac was cracked under their feet, determined weeds pushing through. Around it the scraggly grass was interspersed with mud, and the prisoners lounged about in the sun, smoking and talking, just glad to be outside. Some pulled off their shirts, soaking up what little summer they ever got, the battered old football lying ignored.

They reached the wall that towered over them, topped with coils of barbed wire, and Ramsay pushed Theon against it. ‘ _Awww_ , did the little runt hurt your feelings? Want me to skin him for ya?’

Theon shook his head. ‘It dun’t matter.’

‘No, it dun’t. I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks and you shun’t either. You should only care what _I_ think. And I think,’ he leant so close to Theon’s neck its whole body shuddered while he took in its scent of stale sweat and dried cum, ‘I think you smell good enough to eat. And maybe I will one day, peel and roast you then eat you all up so you can never get away.’

Theon let out a brief, desperate laugh that didn’t sound like anything would ever be funny again.

Placing both hands flat at either side of its shoulders, Ramsay carried on, ‘I was gonna tell ya, I got a letter from me dad, it had some stuff for me to sign. He’s getting hissen put on me birth certificate and he’s getting his lawyer to change me name to Bolton. So I’m legit. I guess the _shame_ of having a son inside is worth it to have an heir. Anyway, he owes me for what put me in here.

‘Did I ever tell ya? He had me kill a man who owed him money. Beat him to death. But they only did me for manslaughter ’cuz of me being a minor and my “mental health issues”. Shame your dad dun’t want ya, innit? But least he trained ya for me. Him, and your uncle with his late night visits and sweets. That’s why you _take_ it so well. Lifetime of practice.’

Theon made a noise caught somewhere between a sob and a hiccup, but kept its gaze trained beyond Ramsay and upwards. Ramsay turned to look, but all he saw was the sky, more blue than grey for once, but still boring.

‘And he din’t say in so many words,’ Ramsay said, looking back into the depths of its eyes, ‘the screws always read me mail, but he wants me to hurry things up with you. Think less about your arse and more about your fake family. Oh, and there was letters for you from ’em, Robb, and Jon, and their little bitch sister, but nowt that’s gonna help me dad so I burnt ’em.’

Ramsay felt its body tense then slacken, but it didn’t say a word. Beyond the wall, the trees rustled like a forest of screams, the branches reaching overhead, pushing their way inside.

He pulled his cigarettes out, gave it one and took one for himself, lit them both. Watched its hand shake while it smoked.

‘You owe me for the fag,’ he told it. ‘We’ll just add it to your tab. And you know what I want.’ Running a hand over its hip, he asked, ‘You healing okay?’

It nodded its head, quick, short movements, eyes widening. It clearly didn’t want to repeat the healing process of having bootleg hooch poured on it that was only just shy of lighter fluid.

Ramsay shoved his hand into its tracky bottoms and ran his fingers over the X inked there. It flinched but held its ground, ‘Did I tell you what it means? The X? It’s in the centre of me dad’s family crest. Fucking hilarious, innit, that I’ve got a crest. But it’s _mine_ now, like you are. And our family motto is hilarious too: "Our knives are sharp". It’s like they saw me coming. Speaking of,’ he grabbed the stiff, filthy sleeve of the only jumper he let it wear anymore and pulled as he set off back inside, ‘I wanna get me cock inside ya before tea. And you can stay in me cell while I go get mine, you’re too fat, I wanna be able to feel ya down to your bones.’

###

Ramsay threw his spade down onto the ground. ‘Fuck this!’

‘Snow! This in’t a fucking holiday camp, no slacking off!’ the guard overseeing Ramsay’s work-crew yelled.

‘ _Bolton_ , it’s _Bolton_ now,’ he muttered as he snatched the spade off the mud.

He looked back at the prison as he turned over the half-frozen soil. Autumn had hit hard, and a glitter of frost covered the earth. While he worked, he tried to work out which small, barred window was his cell. He counted down the length of the corridor. Thirteen, fifteen, seventeen – and there it was: his. Theon must be in there. Lying on its bunk, maybe even Ramsay’s bunk, smoking his fags probably while it watched his TV or read his comics. It seemed to go out of its way to be punished. Still, that was something to look forward to.

As he worked, Ramsay enjoyed the burn in his biceps and listened to a muffled commotion coming from inside. He’d go to the gym after he finished work he decided. His pet could protest as much as it liked, not that it really did anymore, but he knew it liked his muscles, liked his strength, liked that he was getting bigger as it got smaller. Its shivering body shrinking, and the roots of its hair growing in grey as the blond grew out. Pale and skeletal. Like a ghost. A pretty little ghost that was all his.

So he finished his pointless drudge work, picturing the screw’s head with each stab of the spade into the hard ground, then worked out his aggression at the gym, lifting weights and running, running, running.

And he hummed to himself while he made his way back down his cell-block, some shit song that had been playing on the radio outside about being trouble and no good. It reminded him of his pet.

‘You better have been good while I were –’ he started to say as he went into his cell. But he stopped in his tracks. There was no one there.

Hands balling into fists he made his way back into the wide corridor, and stormed through it till he found Maze sitting on the edge of his bunk, some fragile-looking inmate with tight red curls knelt between his legs, head bobbing up and down as Maze’s slick dick slid in and out of view.

‘Where the fuck is it?’ Ramsay demanded.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, man, can this wait? I’m in the middle of – _ah_ – summat!’ Maze wrapped curls around his fingers and pulled himself free.

‘No it can’t _fucking_ wait _, where is it?_ ’

‘Where’s what?’

‘Theon, you dipshit, there’s nowt else I gave a crap about in this dump.’

‘Oh, right… Yeah summat happened… I dunno what exactly, there was some scene with the screws, yelling and shit, he got taken to the infirmary.’

‘And you din’t come fetch me?’

‘How the fuck was I meant to do that?’ He tugged the hem of his T-shirt down as he spoke, trying to cover himself up, as if it mattered. ‘Was I meant to come tell the guards outside I needed to speak to ya ’cuz your useless bitch can’t be left on his own for five minutes and got hissen into trouble?’

The noise that escaped Ramsay’s throat was almost a hiss. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’

Avoiding guards, waiting till they left for change of shift, he made his way through the labyrinth-like corridors, the dead red eyes of cameras following his progress.

The medical wing was quiet when he got there, after the constant background noise of the cell-block.

He paused outside and took a deep breath, running his fingers through his wavy hair that always managed to look a mess and was still damp from the shower block at the gym. He smoothed his hands down his sweatshirt, relaxed his face, the lines of tension smoothing from between his eyebrows.

Pushing open the door, the smell of disinfectant hit him, and the lights were dimmed, curtains pulled around a couple of the handful of beds. The only sound the soft beeps of machines, laboured breathing and quiet snoring.

Behind a desk sat a young nurse dressed in a blue uniform, with matching hijab. He’d never met her, but Maze mentioned her, had a ridiculous fantasy of getting into her knickers. What was her name? Ammie? Amma? Aminah? Yeah, that was it, Aminah.

‘Aminah?’ He said going up to her. At her expression of confusion he added, ‘Maze has mentioned you – Matt I mean, Matthew – he says how nice you are.’

Under her honey gold skin, she honest-to-God blushed, and he almost laughed. But he kept his expression carefully downcast while he carried on speaking.

‘My – my boyfriend got brought in earlier – can I see him? _Please._ I’ll only be a minute. I just need to know he’s okay.’

She looked down at the papers on her desk. ‘I can’t,’ she said, with a slight accent he couldn’t place. ‘The patients are not allowed visits from other inmates.’ She glanced up, a shadow of disapproval crossing her face. ‘And what you do with him, you are not allowed to – to do things like that in Oakwood Hall.’

Ramsay bit the inside of his lip so hard he tasted blood while he forced a small smile, gripping his hands together behind his back. ‘I know, I know… But we can’t help who we fall in love with, right? Just a minute? That’s all. What’s it matter to anyone?’

She sighed, and glanced at the door. ‘Dr Narang on break, but she be back soon. You can have _five_ minutes, but no – no physical contact.’

Ramsay’s face lit up with his most winning smile. ‘Ta so much,’ he said, as she ushered him into one of the cubicles.

The second she pulled the tatty old curtain closed behind him, the smile slid from his face.

Theon lay in the bed, as pale as the sheet outlining its body, one arm in a sling and crossed over its abdomen, the other hooked up to a drip.

Eyes closed, it slept, looking peaceful.

Ramsay’s jaw clenched as he went to stand by it, reached over the raised bars at the side of the hospital-style trolley, and clamped his hand over its mouth.

Theon’s eyes flew open, hot breath snorting out of its nostrils against Ramsay’s hand as it raised its one good arm.

After a second recognition visibly hit, but that didn’t seem to lessen its fear. And it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t at all.

‘ _Shhh_ ,’ Ramsay said, leaning down, leaning close, ‘it’s only me.’ He smiled, eyes hard as stone. ‘That cunt nurse told me not to shag ya in here – I should just to piss her off.’ He looked down the length of Theon’s prone body. ‘But we only have a minute. You smell wrong,’ his brow furrowed, looking back into its eyes, ‘what the fuck did you do?’ He slid his hand away, wiped it on his T-shirt then gripped the bar.

‘I’m s-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m –’

‘Yeah, alright, we don’t have time for your bullshit.’

It was trembling, tears leaking from the corners of its eyes and running into its hair.

‘What. The fuck. Happened?’ Ramsay asked again. ‘And keep your voice down. If you get hysterical she’ll wanna chuck me out, and you don’t wanna watch what I’ll do to her if she tries.’

‘I was just – just in your cell, just, like, waiting for you. I always wait for you. I was being good. But you know how I an’t been going to my classes to learn, like basic English and maths and shit, and to the job they gave me at the laundry? ’Cuz – cuz you don’t like me going places on me own, and you’re right, I’m no good on me own, I do bad things and –’

‘ _Anyway_.’

‘So the teachers told the guards I an’t been turning up, and some of the prisoners… they’ve made complaints about how I… I smell… And they said you do stuff to me… And some screws came,’ it stopped and hiccuped in a breath, then started talking again, fast as it could get the words out, ‘they called me a tramp, a puff, said I cun’t work the prison like I was a prossie on some street corner in Holbeck, said it was disgusting the things I let you do to me, said I’m not all there and they was gonna strip me and watch me take a shower. And I said no! I was so scared, I din’t want them to take me, I –’

‘Got it, scared, then what?’

‘I held onto the door frame, and I cried, and screamed, I said they cun’t trick me – I thought, I thought you sent them as a test – but the guards, they got real angry, and started hitting me, and one bent my arm behind my back till – till I felt it snap. And then there was more guards and they bought me here. They said it’s dislocated. It hurt so much.’ It stopped talking and caught its breath, looking up at Ramsay with wide, terrified eyes.

Stuck somewhere between homicidal rage and an unaccustomed helplessness, Ramsay stroked its hair, leaning down so it could feel his breath on its cheek. ‘What did you tell them, like about your scars?’

It looked up into his eyes, so needy. ‘I said I did it all, they know – know I self-harm. They asked how come I’ve got a finger missing, and – and some toes, but I just kept saying it was accidents. And they said I’m too thin, but they think I’ve got an eating disorder.’

‘Good – that’s good. And your teeth?’

‘I said I walked into a door.’

Ramsay laughed. He’d taken to punching it in the mouth, seeing how many teeth he could loosen, watch them wobble till they gave up and came out, the bloody length of them. It made its mouth softer to fuck, made it cower over more, looking at the ground, hiding itself, hand fluttering over its lips. ‘And they showered you?’ His jaw clenched.

‘No, the nurse, she gave – gave me a sponge bath. Said someone’s gonna come tomorrow and cut my hair, check me for nits.’

Ramsay ran his fingers as best he could through its still-matted hair, almost down to its shoulders now. ‘Fuckers. It’s none of their business what I do to you.’ He straightened up. ‘Which guards came to my cell?’

‘Booth, he’s the one that – that hurt me worst, and Rusnak I think? The one that takes new prisoners off for strip searches all the time and touches us too much. They won’t come back?’

‘No, they won’t come back, pet. I’ll take care of it. Do they seem worried about you in here?’

Theon nodded. ‘They said they’re gonna try find me a place in VP wing – they said that’s for, like, “vulnerable” prisoners.’

Ramsay dug his nails into its arm till his fingertips were wet with blood. ‘Don’t let them take you away, you hear me? I’ll find you, I’ll find you and I’ll break every fucking bone in your body.’

It nodded, looking tense enough to snap.

‘Good boy,’ Ramsay whispered and kissed its forehead. ‘I’ll never let anyone hurt you again, you hear me? But I’d better split before that bitch freaks. Watch what you say, and remember: there’s no way out.’

He left quietly, only nodding to the nurse. He had things to take care of.

###

First he told Maze, ‘Get everyone in here together who’s worked for me dad, or whose family has: Cam, Górski, that nutter Batesy who’s in here for butchering his parents, the Moorhead Estate gang owe us, and whoever the fuck else. Find who the fuck grassed and beat the shit out of ’em. No, no, just fucking kill ’em, flay off their fucking skin and bring me their fucking heads.’

Maze was silent for a moment. ‘The beating them up idea sounds good, so maybe we should just go with plan A…’

Reaching up, Ramsay threw his arm around Maze’s neck and pulled him down close, his other hand landing flat on maze’s chest. ‘You let my property get damaged and stolen while you were getting your rocks off with a smackhead who looked about twelve. Now is not a good time to try tell me what the fuck to do.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘If that was sarcasm I’ll take your head off missen, with a fucking screwdriver if I have to.’

‘No – no, not sarcasm. I know why your dad is where he is, and you’re where you are, and I’m where I am. I’ll always blink before you do.’

‘Yeah, and then I’d push my thumbs into the sockets and scoop out your fucking eyes.’ He banged his hand against Maze’s chest. ‘Good boy, get to it. And gimme the mobile you’ve got stashed and I’ll deal with the screws.’

###

‘Right, Dad, fine, I’ll do whatever you want when I get out of here, just get me the fuck out so I can do it, and deal with those fucking guards.’

There was a pause on the line. ‘What happened to Father?’

‘What?’

‘You usually call me Father, or, better still, Sir.’

‘Does it matter? I’m your proper son now. Like, legally. And my mind’s on other stuff.’

‘Yes: your creature.’

‘My creature? What is it – he – Frankenstein?’

‘Actually, that would make you Dr Frankenstein, and him the monster.’

‘Oh I’m definitely the monster.’

‘Indeed. But I don’t know if I should indulge your obsession with your… plaything. I keep an eye on what goes on in there. I get reports. I know what you’ve been doing to him. I warned you not to destroy him, he could have been useful.’

‘He still will be. He’ll do whatever I tell him now.’

‘And yet you have so far failed to provide any useful information about the Starks.’

‘I’ve been training him.’

‘You have been treating that place as your personal BDSM dungeon and fight club. It isn’t a game. I could leave you there, and given your total lack of impulse control you would spend the rest of your life rotting in a prison cell.’

It was Ramsay’s turn to fall silent. Clutching the tiny phone to his ear, that had probably been smuggled in stuffed up someone’s jacksie, he stared out the window of his cell. Through the thick glass and past the white paint flaking off the bars, past the yard, past the field, past the wall, to the mass of green leaves reaching up into the black sky and swaying in the breeze. ‘So?’ he said eventually, staring at the boring, empty, nothingness of it all. ‘They pay me to fight, everyone’s shit-scared of me, they’ve given up trying to cure me, and I can shag anyone I want. It gets a bit boring, no bints – no _cunts_ – not even any shemales in here so far, but I’ve thought of a way around that. So, if you want, I’ll just turn this dump red and have a massacre.’

Through the crackly line, his father sighed. And Ramsay knew, knew he would never be ‘Dad’. Still, it would make everything that was to come easier.

‘Alright – I shall arrange things on my end. I don’t need you to be even more of an embarrassment. And you have your uses. But I warn you, end up on the news and I’ll disown you in a heartbeat.’

‘Thank you for the support, _Sir_ ,’ he said, and hung up.

###

‘Makes you feel like a big man, does it?’ Ramsay said, before punching Booth in the guts. He doubled over, all the air knocked out of him. Grabbing a handful of greasy brown hair, Ramsay pulled his head up. ‘Hurting little boys who can’t protect themselves? I mean, yeah it makes _me_ feel like a big man, but get your own fucking twink.’

‘This in’t a fair fight!’ he gasped out, sagging between the two prisoners holding him up.

‘Fuck fair.’ Ramsay punched him again, the flabby belly soft under his fist. ‘Tomorrow you’re gonna quit your job. My father’s transferred ten grand into your bank account. You’re gonna forget whatever lies you got told, and if I ever see you again I’ll slit your fucking throat.’

And once Booth was a bloody mess on the floor, Ramsay spat on him then said, ‘Could be worse, the filth are about to find a shitload of kiddie porn on Rusnak’s laptop. He’s gonna have fun in prison as an ex-screw nonce.’

In the background, doors slammed and inmates begged, and the smell of blood and sound of fists hitting flesh filled the air.

###

It was a boring week with Theon in the infirmary. The screws didn’t much bother to come onto the cell block anymore at least, and Ramsay spent most of it alone in his cell, chain smoking, watching movies, and getting himself off. He’d considered slitting Maze’s throat when there hadn’t been a pile of bodies on the landing, but as Maze had pointed out, ‘If we do anything that can’t be hushed up, you’ll be carted straight off to a maximum security prison, and Theon’ll still be here.’ So, reluctantly, he’d let it go.

He lay on his bunk, a cigarette smouldering between his fingers and a forgotten comic on his chest.

And, movements halting, looking down at the ground, Theon appeared in the doorway. Its pale skin was scrubbed clean, not dusky with accumulated dirt, its hair shorter, and its arm in a sling, but other than that it looked the same.

Ramsay gave it a slow smile as it stuttered out, ‘They let m-me go.’

‘I can see that,’ he said, walking over and leaning close, taking in its scent, his jaw tensing. ‘You smell wrong. Get on your knees next to the bog.’

It shot him a confused look but it went, half-falling to the ground while he closed the door with a metallic thud.

‘Open your mouth,’ Ramsay said, coming over then pushing down his tracky bottoms.

‘I’m not meant to get me arm wet…’

‘Do you think I care?’ he answered, as he aimed the amber stream at Theon’s face. It flinched as the warmth hit it, screwed shut its eyes, but stayed put. Swallowed even as it spluttered, Ramsay smiling down at it. ‘We’re gonna have to step things up. I need to know everything you know.’ He aimed the stream down its chest, and over its crotch, his other hand braced against the limewashed concrete wall behind it.

As he shook the last drops over it, it opened its eyes, started to struggle to its feet and head for the sink.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said, pushing it against the wall and licking its neck. ‘If you’re really fucking lucky I’ll give you some of my old clothes to wear afterwards. Now get undressed, I’ve been hard for a week, waiting. And if you’re a really good boy, I’ll make you cum too.’

###

That night, his pet on its back beneath him, its bandaged arm trapped between their chests, Ramsay breathed deeply as he bit its throat. ‘That’s – _fuck_ – better, you reek,’ he grinned as he pounded harder into it and it moaned, lashes fluttering against its cheeks. ‘ _Reek_ – that suits you.’ And Reek wrapped its legs around his hips as Ramsay filled it up with his cum.

When he’d finished and pulled out, while Reek gasped and its heart rate slowed to a normal rhythm, he suckled on its nipples, growling as he bit till his tongue was bathed in blood. He kept sucking, kept nursing, and its remaining fingers pushed into his hair, held him to its chest, cradled there.

It kept mumbling, mumbling – ‘It’s okay – it’s okay – it’s –’

 _I know it’s okay_ , he almost told it, _you’re mine and I can do whatever the fuck I want to you_ , but he just moved over to its other nipple and bit down till the nub was bleeding between his teeth. It gasped, but still held him close.

###

Maze smirked as he came into the cell, Cam, Górski, and Batesy behind him. It was afternoon association, but the guards just left them to it since the cut-rate riot. There were whispers of what had happened to Booth and Rusnak, and wisely they’d all decided not to ask questions.

Ramsay closed the door behind them as he nodded to his pet, kneeling on the floor.

‘Don’t call him Theon again, he dun’t like it. You’ve got a new name now, an’t ya?’ He asked, going up to it and running his fingers through its hair, left stiff with piss and cum. ‘Tell them your pretty new name.’

‘Reek,’ it said, looking steadfastly down at the concrete.

‘Reek, Reek, it rhymes with _freak_. And how long will you be Reek?’

‘Always. Forever. Till I’m rotting in the ground.’

‘Good boy.’ He grinned at the others.

‘He’s fucking disgusting,’ Maze said, standing over it. ‘You’re such a sick perv, Ramsay.’

‘You won’t want a turn then?’

‘I din’t say that,’ he said with a smile that showed his teeth, a few gold, a few missing.

‘They made things right after you was taken, saw to the ones that hurt ya. You owe ’em,’ Ramsay said, looking down at Reek. ‘Be a good boy and show ’em a good time.’ He turned back to the others. ‘You can do whatever the fuck you like to it: fuck it, fist it, cum on it, piss on it, make it eat your shit if you want. I wanna see marks, cuts, bruises. You can cut bits off. I want it to remember this, how lucky it is to have me, how good I treat it, how much worse things could be.’

He lit a cigarette, sat on his bunk and watched as Reek was manhandled, stripped and its sling torn off, as it was put onto its knees. It cried out in pain when it straightened its arm and braced its hands on the floor when they shoved it onto all fours, but didn’t beg. Just took it, took it as they mounted it, one taking its arse while another took its mouth, and the others watched, waited. Took their piss, and took their cum, and gasped, moaned, but didn’t beg. While they called it a prossie, called it a slag, called it just a filthy hole anyone could use. Punched and kicked it, wrapped hands around its throat till it blacked out. Just took it.

‘You’re so good,’ Ramsay said, coming to kneel next to it. He reached beneath it, found its cock barely half-hard as it was rocked back and forth by Batesy who laughed, spanking its arse between each thrust.

Ramsay spit into his hand, then took hold of its length, pulling and stroking. It whimpered around the hardness of Maze in its mouth.

‘Good boy,’ Ramsay said as he stroked. ‘I’ve got you. And you’d better enjoy this, I’m not gonna let you cum again. I ever see you touch yourself, I’ll skin another of your fingers and make you _beg_ me to cut it off. Sex for you is just your hole now, your dick’s just a useless piece of flesh you don’t need anymore.’

‘Yeah – _fuck yeah_ – milk the little bitch, make it nut,’ Batesy said, fucking into it hard and fast, ‘I wanna – _ah_ – wanna feel it tighten up, the slag’s getting too loose.’

And, one hand against the small of its back, the other stroking, stroking, stroking, Ramsay felt Reeks muscles contract as it rocked its hips, desperate, and spasmed wet into his hand. Once Maze had finished, Ramsay fed it its cum.

Afterwards, when the others had left, laughing and patting each other on the back, and Reek lay, curled up on the ground, bloody and face damp with tears and snot, Ramsay knelt down next to it, stroking its back.

And, barely able to move, it pushed its face against his crotch till he got his leaking prick out for it to suckle on.

‘Good boy,’ he murmured, as he thrust into its mouth. ‘My good boy.’

###

It did what it was told after that. Even when Abel, a like-minded guard Ramsay had gotten talking to, brought one of the sniffer dogs around that usually slobbered over visitors searching for drugs. Reek just fell onto all fours to be mounted and took it. While, so eager, the hound pistoned into it, fur pressed to Reek’s back and hot breath on its neck. Shagged Reek so hard and fast Ramsay was impressed. Reek sobbed a bit when long claws scrabbled at its flank, and later when the hound took the back of its neck in his jaw, but it didn’t beg for it all to stop, didn’t say no.

It only begged for Ramsay’s cock in its mouth, the knot still locked inside it. Didn’t complain that it hurt, even with its eyes screwed shut and its remaining fingers scrabbling at the floor, nails scratching at cement. Still and watchful, the German Shepherd had lifted his hind leg over Reek’s back, climbed off and turned around. Still flush to Reek’s hind quarters, his hard knot trapped inside, tying them together.

‘Oh Jesus, _Jesus_ ,’ Abel said as he furiously pushed into his fist, getting himself off, the air heavy with the smell of excited dog and sex.

And, so hard he was blushed red and leaking, Ramsay peeled back his foreskin while Reek pleaded for it, strained for it, ‘Please, please, I need, I –’ the pulsing lump inside holding it in place.

Ramsay let it suckle, laughed when the dog turned its head and growled, baring his fangs. Reek whined when Ramsay pulled away and moved to stroke them both, telling them what good boys they were, fur and scarred, battered skin warm under his hands.

The dog was bigger than Reek, heavier, had overwhelmed it, and Ramsay could cum just watching them bound together. Came barely touching himself, his shaft so sensitive it hurt.

The pack of cigs Abel had handed him was a joke, as if he cared, as if he wouldn’t have done it for free.

He’d explained what a knot was to Reek, explained it was going to be bred, explained it’d be a proper bitch. But he didn’t think Reek understood till it _felt_ it. Felt its guts being filled. Had to just take it, take it, fallen forwards onto its elbows, forehead resting on the ground, wait till the stud finished and pulled out while Reek whimpered bone-deep.

‘Heel, Duke!’ Abel ordered the panting dog once he was free and licking Reek, licking his own well used genitals.

Zipping himself up, Abel held out his sticky hand for the attentions of his dog’s tongue. ‘Good boy.’

Afterwards, once they were alone, Ramsay bent Reek, exhausted, boneless, over the bottom bunk and licked its gaping hole clean, its quivering thighs. So much acrid cum leaking out and its unwashed skin sour with oil and sweat and blood and remnants of shit.

‘I’m not clean,’ it murmured into the mattress, gripping the blanket as it moaned, and Ramsay could picture it blush, picture its shame, even after everything, and he pushed his tongue as deep inside it as he could reach, his laughter vibrating up his throat.

###

‘I’ve gotten you a present,’ Ramsay said, coming back to his cell one day. Reek was kneeling on the floor by the bunks, hands in its lap, its missing fingers abrupt red stumps. Expressionless, it stared down into nothingness. ‘You listening to me, pet?’

It twitched, realizing he was there, and looked up with an expression caught somewhere between terror and adoration that made Ramsay’s breath catch and his dick twitch.

‘Yes, master, I’m sorry, master.’

He took its chin in his hand, its stubble prickling his palm. ‘I got you some treats.’ He pulled a square of silver foil out of his pocket and unwrapped it. ‘Chocolate, for my good boy.’ He pushed it past its lips and its eyelids fell closed with a look of ecstasy. He left his fingers inside for it to lap at, to suck while the chocolate melted on its tongue. It couldn’t manage to chew solid food anymore, the gaps in its teeth too painful.

‘Careful, boy, we have things to do and if you keep that up I’ll have to just shag ya.’

He pulled his fingers free, sucked off the sweet left-overs then wiped his fingers on Reek’s stained T-shirt, while he pulled a little plastic bag out of his pocket. ‘And I got us this.’

While he went over to the desk and rolled a joint, he could feel Reek’s eyes on him. And fuck it felt good, being the centre of someone’s universe.

‘C’mon,’ he said, collapsing onto his bunk and blazing up.

It crawled up and lay by his side, the narrow bunk barely big enough for them both.

Ramsay took a deep drag, blew the smoke up at the sagging wire mesh above as it sunk down into him and he felt himself relax, just a little.

He rolled over, pushed his knee between Reek's thighs and smirked as it cringed in pain. Balancing himself on his elbows either side of it, he leant down and blew smoke between its parted lips, against the holes in its gums. Its eyelids fluttered closed.

‘Your dick hurts? Your balls?’

It nodded, eyes still closed.

‘Good, that means it’s working. I’ll check ’em later.’

‘It hurts to pee, takes ages.’

A lazy smile spread over Ramsay’s lips. ‘That’s good too. Means it’s tight. Show me after we finish talking. I like watching you pee, watching you shit, knowing you’re _mine_ and I can do whatever I want to you. I’ll get Maze to nick some catheter tubing from the infirmary, you can keep it in all the time, help you piss.’

‘I looked earlier – I didn’t touch missen!’ Its eyes flew open with a pleading look. ‘I just looked. They were, like, swollen red, but they’re turning kinda blue and black now, and I can’t feel ’em. It just hurts. What will it mean when it stops hurting?’

‘It’ll mean it worked and they’re ready to be cut off. That you don’t need ’em anymore.’

Reek struggled free and fell off the bed, crawled over to the toilet, retching into it.

Ramsay lay back and smoked, used his tongue to blow rings at the mattress above while the cell filled with the stench of acid and bile. He’d been tying them off. Wrapping anything he could get his hands on tight around the base of Reeks good-sized cock, around its balls, around them all. Rubber bands, twine from when he was gardening, anything he could get and knot tight. Cut off the circulation. Make them shrivel and die. It wouldn’t work like the proper tools, but it’d do the job eventually. He couldn’t have a bitch with a bigger dick than him, it just seemed wrong.

Reek came and lay back by his side, and he let it slip its hand into his trousers, let it card its remaining fingers through the rough hair there while he said, ‘You’re gonna tell me everything you know about the Starks. Theon’s dead and you’re never going back.’

And, passing the joint back and forth between them, Reek murmured all its secrets.

‘I was there once,’ it said, after a lot of boring, endlessly repeated details of life with a home and brothers and sisters. Of the disapproving looks their mother Catelyn directed its way, how it whined like a whipped bitch for every crumb of praise their father Ned gave it, and blah, blah, blah. Those weren’t its exact words, but everything was getting hazy and there was a mutilated hand hovering near Ramsay’s dick…

‘I was there once, when – when Robb killed someone,’ Reek said, and clawed back Ramsay’s attention. But he just smoked, listened. ‘He’d do anything his father said. And someone had fucked them over, betrayed them,’ its breath caught. ‘I don’t know exactly what he’d done. But we ended up in some shitty council house. How much could he even have stolen to still be living in that dump? And it all got out of hand. Robb battered him to death. And I just watched. I understood fuck all back then. I wan’t any better than them, or than… than anyone. I might even have laughed. I was probably kinda high, I usually was. They never let me deliver gear on me own, thought I’d snort it all, and they was right. And I…’

Reek fell silent, and after a while Ramsay poked it, said, ‘Carry on.’

‘What? Oh – I saw Robb kill someone once, helped get rid of the body afterwards. We took it to a bridge and I helped Jon push it off into the water. It took ages to sink. Then he went mental at Robb, but they made up in the end, they always did. I used to have all these fantasies about how Mr and Mrs Stark would adopt me, and then I’d really be one of ’em. Or…’ Reek took a deep drag, before Ramsay took it back.

‘Or what, pet?’

‘… Or _–_ or Robb ’n’ Jon’d fuck me, spitroast me like they did in ’ere,’ Reek looked over to the centre of the floor, the stained concrete. ‘Or maybe Robb would marry me, or Sansa when she were older, that’d have freaked out their parents less. But they still wun’t have let her be with someone like me. A mongrel Robb called me once when he were pissed at me for summat. I saw him kill someone once, I ever tell you that?’

Ramsay gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay silent till it carried on.

‘And sometimes I’d lie in bed and wank thinking about Mr Stark putting me over his knee and spanking me, then he’d fuck me and tell me what a good boy I was, make me call him Daddy.’ It laughed, more hysteria than anything. ‘It’s too late now. They never woulda done any of it anyway. They never wanted me.’

‘I want you,’ Ramsay said, looking up at the filthy stripes of the mattress and feeling the smoke edge its way into his blood.

‘Yeah.’

‘How did a fucker like that get a foster kid anyway?’

‘Most people think he’s a good guy. And he is. I guess he did it ’cuz it made him look even better. And it’s not like he ever got convicted of owt. Ya wun’t wanna cross him though…’

‘You think he scares me?’

‘No – no I don’t think anything scares you.’

And, flood gates open, it told Ramsay about every dirty deal, every bent copper, where all the bodies were buried, while they made their way through the full bag and the room became a blur.

When the well was pumped dry, Ramsay put out the last joint on the flesh of its arm, pushed until he could smell burning meat. Then fucked it, slow and deep, its limp dick pressed against his stomach. Fell asleep still inside it. Feeling as close to peace, in Reek’s absolute surrender, as he’d ever felt.

###

Reek slumped, hanging by its wrists from a torn-up sheet tied to the bars at the end of the top bunk, its bleeding back facing Ramsay. The contraband belt Ramsay had acquired from Abel, for more services rendered, hung from his hand. He gasped for breath, sweat dripping down his face.

‘So good for me,’ he murmured, as he cut Reek down and it collapsed into his arms. He dragged it to the bottom bunk, pushed it down onto its torn-up back. It cradled its right arm against its chest. The joint never had healed right, never stopped hurting, always looked disjointed, unnatural.

Belt discarded on the floor to fasten round its throat when he fucked it later  _–_ a collar, a noose – Ramsay clasped his shank in his hand. Looked down at Reek, waited for its eyes to flicker open. ‘They’re releasing me next week,’ he told it.

Reek’s eyes widened in panic. ‘What? No! I’ll be on me own, they’ll all come at me, all take turns and –’

‘I’ve sorted it with Maze. No one will touch you when I’m not there. You’ve only got a few weeks left anyway.’

It reached up and grabbed at the thin cotton of Ramsay’s T-shirt, looking utterly lost. ‘But what’ll happen to me then?’

‘I’ll come collect you. Wait for me outside. Don’t go anywhere without me.’

Reek just nodded.

Shank biting into its skin, he gave it some deep scars so it wouldn’t forget. Its flesh fell open, pale as uncooked chicken before the blood came.

###

Reek had taken to sleeping curled up on the floor beside Ramsay’s bunk. And Ramsay stepped over it the day he was released, took his clothes and few belongings with him to the showers. Didn’t go back to his cell. Didn’t need it crying and hanging on to him.

When he stepped out onto the street, holdall clasped in his hand, everything seemed so _big_. The sky so blue. He glanced back at the massive old Victorian prison looming over him; it looked like a castle surrounded by woods.

‘You’ll be back!’ a guard called as the gate closed.

‘Then you’d better be fucking ready!’ he shouted back.

Behind him an engine purred. He turned to the vintage, claret Jag rolling up. The driver got out and opened the door for him to climb into the back seat.

‘Ramsay,’ his father said, barely glancing at him. In his well-tailored suit he made Ramsay feel like rough trade in his jeans and leather jacket. Black at least, not _grey_.

‘Thanks – for, like, getting me out.’

His father made a noncommittal grunt. ‘Don’t make me regret it. I expect you to be an asset.’

‘I will be. I’ll make you proud.’

His father said nothing as they sped off towards the city. Beyond the fields and hedgerows, the stone and glass towers of Woldale rose in the distance.

###

Ramsay leaned out a window in the fancy flat his father had rented him and smoked a cigarette. Outside, the trees whispered in the breeze, and annoying ravens cawed like they had something to say. But he was glad of an escape from the quiet of his room, with its massive bed and so much furniture. He’d come to realise it had never truly been silent behind bars, not like being out on his own. And all he did here was lay on the sofa looking at blue walls, and watched movies, no one telling him what to do anymore.

He needed to get out.

The year's first snowflakes fluttered onto his hand from the dusk sky, and he tossed his cigarette to the ground far below then went over to his bedside cabinet. In the drawer were a selection of blades: a butcher knife he’d retrieved from his childhood bedroom; a gutting knife he’d bought at a fishing shop; a hunting knife; a straight razor; and a flaying knife, it’s blade thin enough to separate layers of flesh. He pulled the last one out and slipped it into the pocket of his leather jacket.

He would go to a club tonight, one filled with half-dressed, desperate girls who would be grateful for whatever attention he gave them. Would take his dick and his knife and wouldn’t dare complain.

He smiled as he locked the door behind himself.

Freedom had its perks.

###

‘ _Please – please –_ ’ the man sobbed, and Ramsay grinned down at him, the straight razor in his hand dripping blood. What was his name? Antony? Antonio? It didn’t matter. He was just meat now.

The man was fastened to a chair with silver duct tape wrapped around and around him, like a present. Like Ramsay’s father had wanted to give him something nice for his birthday, if he’d remembered what day it was.

They were in a warehouse, cavernous and freezing cold, the naked bones of its girders showing high above them. Just below that, cut into small squares, filthy windows let in the icy blue of the sky. It stank of the pool of piss around the chair, the man’s trousers sticking to him, Ramsay’s T-shirt sodden with blood.

‘Just find out what he knows and take care of him,’ Ramsay’s father had said. ‘This is what you’re good for.’

And Ramsay grinned as he danced around the room, singing: ‘Clowns to the left of me,’ a shuffle, ‘jokers to the right,’ his arms spread wide, ‘and here I am stuck in the middle,’ he pointed to the man, ‘with you!’

Gasping in breaths of stale air he went and stood in front of the mess of flesh and bone in the centre of the room. ‘You seen that film? Reservoir Dogs. You should! It’s a classic. Except, oh, it’s too late now innit? Ah well – but hey, you’ve done one better, you’ve lived it! And you know what happens next? He cuts of the motherfuckas ear.’

His grin grew as screams echoed off the walls, pulled the fuckers ear till it started to tear free, then sawed and hacked till it came away in his hand, surprisingly easy, like it was waiting for it.

And the man, the thing, just sobbed, snot and tears dripping down the tanned face and mingling with the blood.

‘Can you hear me?’ Ramsay said into the bloodied ear grasped between his fingers. And he laughed, the sound mingling with the screams.

‘I’ll do anything you want!’ the thing in the chair begged, finding its last breaths. ‘I’ll do anything! Tell you – tell you anything! Please! Just stop! Please just –’

‘But you already told me everything.’ Ramsay leaned close, threw the ear to the ground and wiped his hand on its shirt. ‘Ned Stark is planning on forcing my father out. Is paying off his men. Is coming for us: blah, blah, blah. But you know what?’ and he leant even closer, close to the bleeding hole on the side of its head as he whispered and it trembled. ‘ _I don’t care._ You’re my first kill and I’m gonna keep your ear as a trophy. So, if it’s any comfort, I don’t know who the fuck you are but I’ll always remember you.’

And it screamed and screamed as Ramsay went to work carving it to pieces to feed to his father’s hounds. And, at some point he couldn’t quite pin down afterwards, as the pile of body parts grew the screaming stopped.

###

The dodgy Porsche Ramsay’s father had given him to use for ‘work’ was sleek and black. He drove it through the barren wastelands at the edge of Woldale, through industrial parks and fringes of countryside to Oakwood Hall. It was dusk by the time he pulled up across the street from the high walls, the stars overhead emerging sharp as glass.

And there it was. His Reek. Standing outside the gates. Looking down at the pavement, it shook. Even from across the road Ramsay could see the tremors wracking its body. It wore shitty trainers with ripped, faded blue jeans and a retro Stones Roses T-shirt under its grey hoodie. Its hair was mostly grey too, in the last dregs of sunlight as the moon rose over the woods, above the fortress.

It looked up and saw the car, saw Ramsay watching it. Its lips pulled into the shaky mockery of a smile, before it picked up the black bin bag at its feet and came over.

Ramsay pressed the button and the window wound down. ‘You been waiting long?’

‘Since this morning.’

‘Good boy. No one bothered you? And no one else came?’

Reek shook its head. ‘I didn’t tell anyone else I were being released. I only wrote to you. They wouldn’t – wouldn’t recognise me now anyway, and no one but you would want me…’

‘That’s right. Get in.’

It climbed into the passenger seat and Ramsay sped away.

‘Were you good?’ he asked it.

Nodding, Reek rocked back and forth. ‘I – I missed you.’

‘Maze took care of you? No one touched you?’

‘No one even talked to me. I was just on me own all the time. No one dare come near me, even the guards. So I just stayed in your cell, and Maze brought food sometimes. Let us have a pot noodle on me birthday. But I was sick ’cuz I’m not used to eating that much.’

The car filled with the ripe scent of sweat and unwashed skin.

A smile tugging at his lips, Ramsay pulled off into a deserted car park, shopping trolleys at its edges and scraggly, waist-high grass.

‘I missed your mouth. I’ve had plenty of others on the outside but no one sucks me off like you do, their teeth get in the way,’ Ramsay said as he unzipped his fly and pushed its head down. He wrapped its matted hair around his fingers and closed his eyes, drifting into the wet warmth of its mouth as he murmured, ‘ _Mine._ ’

###

‘Can’t we wait?’ Reek asked, lying naked in Ramsay’s empty bathtub.

‘For what?’

Its whole body twitched, pale and tinged blue in the cold, looking like a caught fish again, ready to be scaled and flayed.

‘I dunno, just… you m-might change your mind, you might not like it once it’s done, and then it’s too late, innit.’

‘I know what I want. I din't have stuff to do the job right, castration bands and shit, but they look about ready to fall off anyway. They're meant to just shrivel up and die. But, oh well, least I get to cut ’em off,’ Ramsay answered with a shrug.

They both looked down at the swollen, rotten-looking pieces of flesh nestled between Reek’s thighs. It had kept tightening its bindings while it was on its own, and acquired some impressive new scars across its arm, the back of its wrist, its hand. Had used the shank Ramsay left it – a rusty shard of razor-sharp metal with dirty fabric wrapped around to make a handle.

‘I nicked a gelding knife special,’ Ramsay added, looking at the large, curved and serrated blade in his hand. ‘You’ll feel better once they’re gone. They won’t hurt anymore, and you won’t have them distract ya while I fuck ya. You like it when I fuck you, right?’

It nodded. ‘Okay,’ it said, and Ramsay grinned. He’d have done it anyway, but it was nice being _asked_ to take his blade to someone. He pulled out the catheter he’d pushed right up Reek’s dick into its bladder.

It sobbed, hands over its face while Ramsay worked, muffling its screams. But it was quick, and surprisingly bloodless, slicing open the darkened sack and popping out its testicles, then severing them like an umbilical cord. Its dick took more work, sawing it through.

It threw up on itself afterwards and passed out. Ramsay wiped it down, balled up a towel to press to its wounds and left the white threads blossoming crimson.

Walking through his flat to his bedroom, he made a call on his mobile. ‘Hi, Doc Soto? My father said to call you when I’ve got someone needs stitching up, like, off the books…’ He held the phone in place with his shoulder, barely listening to the drunken ramblings at the other end of the line, while he unlocked the trunk at the end of his bed. Ears, fingers, toes, all rotting together, the stench hitting him like a caress. Only the teeth and hair would last. Some had been business, some pleasure, but they all ended up the same. And he kept part of them all. To not let them, in the end, get away.

He tucked the flaccid length of Reek’s mutilated cock in with his collection. ‘It’s bleeding out in me bath, can you come now? Bring that sounding thing you need to keep its slit from healing closed, so it can still piss. I’ll text you the address. It’s all lovely and red though, so no rush.’

He hung up as he made his way to the kitchen, its shrivelled testicles slippery in his hand. He popped them into a frying pan and lit the flames.

###

They pulled up outside what could pass for a mansion, red brick with stone columns. The gravel crunched under their feet as they made their way to the impressive black door, and waited to be let in. It was the first time Ramsay’d let Reek leave his flat since its release, and he hadn’t told it where they were going. It looked around constantly, jumping at each little sound. It didn’t have any keys, a phone, the passwords to access anything, so he figured one trip out wouldn’t give it any ideas.

‘You’re finally gonna meet me father: it’s like a romcom. If he asks what your intentions are, ask for my hand in marriage, watch him turn even paler, if that’s possible,’ Ramsay told it with a grin.

‘What if he dun’t like me?’

‘Join the fucking club. But I want him to see what I made, what I did, what I’m capable of. He says I don’t have any imagination: but look at you. I made you from scratch. And you’re perfect. Sure you’re out of your fucking mind, but falling in love always means going a little mad.’

Reek looked down at the tiles of the porch with a small smile, its right hand curled, claw-like, low on its belly.

The housekeeper let them in, and they walked through the hallways. Bumping into Ramsay's side, Reek kept its legs spread apart as much as it could, each step laboured. Ramsay smiling to himself at the thought of its stitches pulling and straining. The further into the house they got, the louder the barking became from the back garden, a whole pack of hounds. Reek grasped onto Ramsay’s sleeve, and he let it.

He knocked on the door to his father’s study.

‘Come in!’ his father called. ‘What is your plaything doing here?’ he added as they entered. He stood in front of a large window, framed by fading yellow sunlight.

Ramsay stopped in the centre of the room, Reek a little behind him, still gripping tight to his sleeve.

‘It wanted to see where I grew up.’

Reek mumbled something, but Ramsay just held his father’s gaze.

‘I suppose I have you both to thank.’ Coming around his desk, he poured himself a whisky from the drinks cabinet. ‘The Starks seem to be giving up on encroaching into my territory, we’re beating them at every turn. Would you like a drink?’ he turned to ask.

‘I’ll have one. My “playing” won’t,’ Ramsay answered with a glacial smile that even to him felt like ice and reached nowhere near his eyes.

Roose handed him a glass. His gaze trailed over them both, over Ramsay’s neat black jeans and leather jacket, and Reek’s torn up blue jeans and dirty T-shirt with their cum and blood stains. Reek kept its lips tightly closed, always did on the rare occasions it was around other people. Didn’t want them to see its ruined mouth, Ramsay supposed, its fleshy gums, gaps where teeth had been.

His father ended with a look of disgust and said, ‘We need to push them back west now, back to the other side of the moors. Make sure they get the message. Maybe we should send Theon’s head to Ned as a warning.’

The grip on Ramsay’s sleeve tightened and tugged.

‘I can do better than that. It’s not like they even gave a fuck about "Theon". How about I pick their pretty bitch daughter up outside her school and skin her after we have a little fun? Or maybe before. Or maybe during.’

‘Perhaps. But I need to talk to you about something first.’

‘What?’

‘Must we do this in front of your creature? I had hoped you would get over this unfortunate infatuation once you were released, find someone more suitable. Which would be anyone short of a child, a cadaver, or a dog. Perhaps you could even find a woman who would put up with you, though that never went well before.’

‘It’s –  _he’s_  the only "person" I trust. Except you, of course, sir.’

His father gave an annoyed sigh. ‘Fine: while you were incarcerated I got married. That’s why I rented you your own flat. My wife is… young and sensitive. I wasn’t sure what she would make of you. Let alone Theon.’

‘ _Reek, Reek,_ ’ it mumbled behind Ramsay.

‘But she just had a baby, she’s still in the hospital, and I wanted you to know you have a little brother.’

Ramsay’s smile grew, and it felt like rigor mortis, felt like he was already dead. And he could see everything spinning out of his control as though it had already happened. See his father’s new will being signed, see himself being cut out. And the phone calls would get less frequent until he never heard from his father at all, all his time invested in his new, truly legitimate heir. Then what was Ramsay supposed to do? Get a job at McDonald's? Learn to smile while he asked: ‘Do you want fries with that?’

Smooth, slow, he placed his tumbler on the shiny mahogany of the desk. Reached behind his back under his jacket as he stepped forwards. Grasped the handle sticking out the holster in the back of his jeans as he pulled his father towards him into a hug. Said, ‘Congratulations, Sir, I’m so happy for –’

And he struck. Buried the blade in his father’s abdomen, put all his weight behind it until hilt hit skin.

His father just looked surprised as he staggered, opened his mouth to speak but only blood leaked out.

Ramsay set upon him, got him to the ground, straddled his hips and brought the blade down over and over and over. The rhythm of it, the frenzy, it felt better than sex, his face splattered with blood warm as cum.

The rest of the world only solidified again when he heard rhythmic, wordless cries behind him, and turned to see Reek rocking back and forth.

‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll cut out your tongue,’ he hissed. Reek clamped its hands over its mouth.

Ramsay staggered to his feet, and they stood in silence while he listened for anyone coming to check what the commotion was. He waited. Who else was in the house? Just the housekeeper?

‘Help me get him covered up,’ he said to Reek, who didn’t move. He grabbed its arms with both hands. ‘Get your fucking shit together! I need your help. Want me to end up inside again, and you out here on your own?’

It shook its head, helped Ramsay wrap his still groaning father in the afghan rug he was splayed out on, helped him carry it through the house to the garages and get it into the back seat of his father’s Jag. Reek limped, making desperate little sounds in its throat.

‘Stay here and don’t move, I’m gonna go have a word with the housekeeper, make her see sense.’ He pressed the hunting knife into Reek’s shaking, ruined hand. ‘If it moves, stab it.’

It was an easier conversation than he’d expected, she knew the type of man she’d worked for, knew he wasn’t worth dying over. She was already getting out the bleach when he headed back to the garages.

They drove out to the woods, and Reek, not very strong anymore, watched while Ramsay dug a shallow grave. They rolled his father into it, the body still twitching. Covered it up, the muffled, hacking gasps disappearing. Buried it. Stood by the mound, looking down, wet with blood, mud stuck to them in clumps.

Waited till it could never draw another breath.

‘I don’t have anything to say.’ He glanced over at Reek, who just shook and twitched. ‘Shame we cun’t keep its body a while, wait till it went hard, pissed and shit itsen. I an’t fucked a corpse yet.’

‘Can we go home now?’

‘C’mon, if you’re really good I’ll let you give me a bath and ride me afterwards.’

And Reek hobbled to the car, eager as it climbed inside and waited. Above them, the circle of tree tops showed the moon, fat and bloated. Ramsay climbed into the driver’s seat, pulled away, and didn’t look back.

###

It was all his, his father’s empire. The biggest criminal network in the North, and it was his. Who could stop him taking it? Let them try. He’d peel them down to their bones.

‘Me stepmam and her baby died in a car crash on their way back from the hospital, such a tragedy, and me dear father’s missing,’ he’d told Reek, who just rocked back and forth making desperate little sounds. ‘I wonder if being an orphan is better than being a bastard? I think me junkie slapper of a mother’s dead by now, anyway. She fucking better be. He kept a copy of the fucking DNA test proving I was his in his office, said my eyes looked like his but she’d had so many punters shag her I coulda been anybody’s. And he said he raped her, I ever tell you that? But he wun’t have needed to bother, she’d let anyone get their end away for a line of blow. She’d have let me if I were desperate enough. She offered. But I only let her suck me off, far as I remember. I din’t wanna catch whatever that skank had.’

And today was the next step. Ramsay took out the gun he’d retrieved from his father’s safe, checked it was loaded with a click, and slipped it into the back of his jeans. The black plastic of the Glock was surprisingly heavy, poking into his skin.

He didn’t much like guns, liked to be hands on, liked to see himself reflected in their eyes as they died. But some people were just too damn hard to get close to. And his father had trained him, trained him from being ten years old, trained him to use guns, to use knives, to be ruthless. But had, perhaps, underestimated Ramsay’s ability to enjoy it. ‘Incapable of empathy,’ the psychological reports had said. And Ramsay had just smiled.

‘I got you a present,’ he said, waving a small plastic bag of white powder in front of Reek.

Its hand trembled as it took it.

‘And some friends of mine are coming round, show them a good time while I’m out. They want to see your pretty scar.’

It hobbled over to the dressing table – it had lost another toe, skinned down to the bone before it begged for it to be taken – and cut itself a line.

When Ramsay left, his pet was riding one dick while another fucked it from behind, its hole stretched around them both.

It just looked dazed, rubbing at its nose while the guy behind held it up by twisting its deformed arm behind its back. Its scar and slit a jagged red gash between its legs.

Another man watched, every inch of his skin covered in intricate lines, his face etched with a skull, spikes and balls protruding from his eyebrows, his nose, his split tongue, and probably decorating the parts not yet revealed. His inked hand pressed a wad of twenties into Ramsay’s which he slipped into his pocket. He hadn’t yet gotten access to his father’s bank accounts, but he would.

He made it downtown in the snow, thick under his boots.

And there in the distance, in front of a fancy public school, was Ned Stark with his youngest two sons. In their starched grey uniforms with their striped ties, they looked straight out of a porno.

And Ramsay edged closer, staying flush with the wall of the building across the street.

The shots were too loud, too echoing, and Ned’s runts crumpled to the ground, collateral damage before the back of Ned’s head exploded in a spray of brain and bone. His security yelled and looked around for where the shots had come from.

Ramsay turned and legged it down the snicket, out into the busy road and down the street, through more alleys and crowds until he couldn’t run anymore and he doubled over, hands on his knees and gasping for breath, the gun hot against his back.

He headed home, smiling to himself, everywhere white and blue and bright in the ice cold glare of the sun.

###

‘Ned Stark’s dead,’ Ramsay told Reek a few days later. A few days of waiting to see if the remaining Starks would turn up on his doorstep. They hadn’t. Though, if they did, he was ready.

It didn’t say anything, just sat on the edge of Ramsay’s bed, looking beaten. Broken. Lost.

‘Did you hear me?’

It nodded. ‘Mr Stark’s dead.’

‘Maybe some of his sons too. Or maybe I just crippled them. But when that bullet hit Ned’s head? That was the money shot, no way he survived that. Do you still think about them? Still pretend they’re gonna adopt you and shag you and all that crap?’

It shook its head. ‘I don’t think about anyone but you.’

‘Good boy. Except, you’re not a boy anymore, are you?’ Standing before it, he splayed his fingers against its throat. ‘I’ve made you into a girl. Do you want to be my good little girl? Want me to get you a pretty dress? But your tits aren’t much to write home about. That alchie doc who got struck off, he won’t shut up when he’s had a skinful, and he said you’re gonna have less muscle and more fat. Except you already don’t have much muscle and I won’t let you get fat. But you’ll be softer, and smoother, and you’ll lose your body hair, and never go bald. And people say eunuchs were bitchy, but you wun’t dare try that with me.

‘So you’re just a man with no dick and no balls, just a hole to be fucked like you were already. So no different now than before. Except it makes me hard just looking at you. Makes me… happy? Whatever the fuck that means. Knowing you really would do _anything_ for me.’

It looked up at him. ‘I would.’

‘I know. Because you love me?’

‘Because – because I love you.’ It took a shaky breath and swallowed. ‘Something happened yesterday. I – I was going to tell you, I just… I wasn’t sure. I’m still not sure really.’ It looked down again, hands twisted together and its trembling vibrating up Ramsay’s arm.

‘And you just decided to tell me now? You think now we’re getting all warm and fuzzy I won’t hurt you?’

It looked up, lashed clumped together with unshed tears. ‘No,’ it’s voice shook, cracked. ‘No, I’d never think that.’

He tightened his grip around its throat.

‘The phone rang,’ it carried on, voice hoarse, ‘the one next to your bed, and I answered it. I know – I know I’m not meant to, but I thought it might be you, you were gone so long… I never know if you’re coming back… And I kept saying “hi,” but no one said anything, and it kept ringing, but there was never anyone there…’

It hiccuped in a breath and swallowed, its Adam’s apple straining to move under Ramsay’s hand.

‘Don’t stop now,’ he said, smiling down at it, his whole body alight with anticipation. Its tears finally escaped and splashed against his wrist.

‘I looked out the window – I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do, I know I’m not meant to open the curtains, but –’

‘Then. What?’

‘Across the street, I saw someone I thought I recognised. But I don’t know. Everything is so mixed up. But… the dead-me… Theon… he had a sister…’

Ramsay growled low in his throat as he pushed Reek back onto the bed and climbed on top of its trembling body. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I know, but –’

‘What is your name?’

‘Reek, but –’

‘ _What. Is. Your. Fucking. Name?_ ’

‘Reek – Reek. My name is Reek. It rhymes with freak, weak, leak, geek, m-meek, s-sneak, s-s-shriek –’

‘I think you like it when you make me punish you. I think you push and push and push so I’ll crack, show you how much you mean to me. Needy little slag.’

He kneeled beside it while he pulled his belt open, his fly. He dragged off the lace knickers he’d gotten it, reached between its legs and grasped at the plug keeping it ready, keeping it open, his fingers slipping. ‘ _Fuck,_ ’ he muttered till it crowned and slid out while Reek gasped.

He chucked the cheap plastic onto the floor, spit into his hand and got himself fully hard while Reek watched, didn’t take his eyes off Ramsay’s cock till it was shoved inside him.

‘I know what you – _fuck_ – need,’ he said while he pounded into it, the ruin of its crotch a rigid, scarred stump against his belly, the slit it peed through damp. ‘I’m gonna get you a collar and lead, keep you tied up in here naked. You’d enjoy that wun’t ya? Like that time you wouldn’t keep still so I nailed your fucking foot to the floor.’

It tried to answer but his hand was back around its throat, squeezing, so it just wrapped its legs around his hips, its remaining fingers digging into his back.

‘Fuck, yeah,’ Ramsay gasped out, ‘like that, just like that.’

It clawed at his hand as he squeezed tighter, squeezed till its eyes rolled back and only the whites were visible, its whole body convulsing. It just made choking sounds, then no sound at all.

He slapped its face, slapped it hard, left it red. ‘Fucking come back, I want you here, you ever fucking try leave me I’ll hunt you down, I’ll find you and make you sorry.’

Mouth slack it lay there like a dead fish, the gaps of its missing teeth showing, and he slapped its face again, fucked it harder till it mumbled words he couldn’t make out. Smeared across its face, its eyeliner and lipstick made it look like a murdered prossie, its grey hair wild against the mattress.

‘Your body’s so fucking hot,’ Ramsay gasped out, its remaining nipple pushing against him as it arched its back, still mumbling words he couldn’t decipher.

‘Gonna give you me cum,’ he told it, ‘fill you up.’

And Reek just took it, took it, took it, till Ramsay bit so hard on its collar bone red blood filled his mouth and ran down its shoulder, while cum overflowed and ran down its thighs.

He kept moving till he couldn’t stand it anymore and pulled out, shoving his fingers into its hole instead. Pushed his seed back inside, dribbling out over his hand. Pushed up and rubbed, scratched, till he found the spot inside that made Reek’s mumbling form into begging and Ramsay growl as he worked it, milked it.

‘Touch your slit, touch your cunt,’ he ordered, and watched while it fumbled at itself, at its little slit that could barely take a fingertip, its stump swollen with arousal. While he kept rubbing the gland inside it, battering it with his fingers.

‘Gonna get off having your prostate massaged like in a porno? Gonna cum for me, pet? Can you even cum? If you cum for me I’ll lick it all up. Go down on you and make your pussy wet.’

And it sobbed and keened while it rubbed, frantic till it must have been sore, the ridges and planes and hollows of its new body. The body Ramsay gave it. And he groaned, rutting against its thigh as it dug its nails into his arm, and it should do that more, make him bleed more, leave its mark on him.

And with a surprised sob, its hips bucking up, it contracted around his fingers, babbling as clear liquid leaked from its slit, and Ramsay laughed as he licked it clean.

And each time he glanced up, the aquamarine of its eyes watched him.

He left it lying there panting for breath, while he took a shower then pulled on clean clothes.

Looked down at it, stripped naked down to its bones. Nothing kept back from him, nothing left to hide.

‘I gotta go deal with work stuff. I’ll be back tonight. Plug yourself to keep my spunk inside you, and if you’re a good little _thing_ I’ll make you scream when I get back.’ Ramsay turned off the lights, then paused and glanced around at the shape sprawled on his bed. ‘And tomorrow I’ll take you back to me dad’s house, it’s mine now. I wanna take you out to the kennels and introduce you to his pack of hounds. Dobermans, with great big cocks. I used to feel ’em up when I was a bairn. I wanna watch ’em pull a train on ya, one knot after another. I wanna feel your belly swell there’s so much cum inside ya. See if you can survive or if they punch a hole in your guts.’

And he left it in darkness, locked the front door on his way out, went down in the lift, then outside into the black and white world of ice and shadows.

###

Ramsay shivered as he watched the cars pull away from the warehouse, and wrapped his jacket tighter around himself. The snow had been shovelled from in front of the big freight doors so they’d open and there was road briefly visible outside.

This might have been why his father just had him skin people once he developed a taste for it, business meetings were boring. Even surrounded by ruthless fuckers who’d done sick shit he hadn’t even dreamt of yet, it was boring.

‘That went about as well as could be expected,’ Franklin said, coming outside and joining him.

‘Did it?’ Ramsay asked, while Franklin offered him a cigarette. He took it, let Franklin light it.

Franklin shrugged, his expensive wool overcoat rising and falling gracefully over his suit. The flurry of snow drifted in front of his face, settling for a moment, ice on his dark skin. Ramsay could see why he’d ended up his father’s right-hand man, he looked and sounded like a high-class businessman, even though beneath that he must be a stone-cold killer. And, while Ramsay’d never admit it to anyone, inside the meeting he’d felt like a cheap tosser playing at being one of the big boys, like his father used to accuse him of being.

Their smoke curled white as frost in the air.

‘They acted like I was faking it, like I was dirt, like I cun’t organise a knees up in a brewery,’ Ramsay said when the silence became too oppressive, and he was starting to wonder if Franklin would let anyone top him, and how big a problem it would be if Ramsay didn’t take no for an answer. ‘Said there’d be “some role” for me, you heard ’em? Fuck that, it’s all _mine_.’

‘There are rumours about what happened to Roose, Walda and their baby, and, more importantly, Eddard Stark. And about some of your… proclivities.’

‘My what?’

‘Your interests – your weaknesses.’

‘Me father said that’s what made me useful, the things I was prepared to do for him.’

‘Your father said you were a mad dog, a liability who was going to end up a serial killer, and that the only reason he didn’t put you down was because you were his son.’

Ramsay flicked his cigarette into the snowdrift beside the road. ‘Fuck you! Me dad’s dead and I’m in charge now, I’m –’

‘Your father is _missing_ , and you shouldn’t assume you can just replace him. I know what you thought: the king is dead, long live the king. But this isn’t a feudal monarchy, it’s a business. And you’re seen as unstable, unreliable. You’re young, half my age, some of the local bosses are three times your senior, and you spent most of your adolescence incarcerated. You have no idea how things work out here in the real world. And, people like us, we have to be twice as good as them. The dinosaurs in there, they look at me and they see a nigger. They look at you and they see a lunatic fairy. I _am_ twice as good. You’re just vicious.’

‘So what the fuck am I meant to do to get them in line?’

‘You want my advice? However, I know that you won’t take it.’

‘Go right fucking ahead.’

‘Leave your “plaything” as your father called him, and yes we all know what you did. Were it not for Mr Stark’s unfortunate passing, he would have strung you up by your bollocks once he found out. Take as much of your father’s estate as you can liquefy quickly and go buy a house, a pub even, in Thailand, or the Philippines. Somewhere with an all-you-can-eat sex industry where you can do what you like and no one will care about a few disposables disappearing. Leave on your own terms, whilst you still can.’

‘Yeah, well, fuck you too!’ Ramsay said as he strode away.

‘Like I said, I knew you wouldn’t listen,’ following him.

He ploughed through the banks of snow towards where he’d parked on the industrial estate, the lampposts throwing circles of yellow light onto the snow between the darkness. A few desperate prostitutes shook against warehouse and factory walls, called, ‘Looking for a good time, pretty boy?’

‘Fuck off!’ he called back, sticking two fingers up then balling his hands into fists.

He needed to get home and work out what the fuck to do next. But he wasn’t running, fuck that. They could come for him and he’d eat them alive.

###

His block of flats loomed ahead, an old building on the edge of Woldale city centre, big windows and turrets nudging the sky. Ramsay pulled up with a screech of tyres and banged the door closed so hard the whole car rocked.

‘ _C’mon_ ,’ he muttered inside the lift, watching the numbers light up above the doors as it climbed: _six, seven, eight_. He tapped his fingers against the glass of the mirror behind him. _Nine, ten_.

‘ _Fucking finally_ ,’ he said when it reached his floor and he strode down the corridor. _‘Shit_.’ The door to his flat stood half-open, the lock splintered.

 _‘Reek!’_ he yelled, pushing inside.

The lights were on, the place ransacked, and he barged through each room, calling, ‘Reek! For fucks sake where are you? If you’re hiding just get your arse out here, I won’t be mad!’

But he threw open every cupboard, every closet, his wardrobe: nothing. The papers he’d scavenged from his father’s house and then not read were scattered everywhere. His trunk scratched, forced open, his trophies lay dumped over the floor, his shank gone.

He shoved a few of his things into a holdall, but when he turned there were men in his doorway. Lackeys of his father he’d seen around but never paid much attention to. Big, tattooed men with thick arms and thick necks.

‘Someone beat us to it? You’re popular,’ one of them said, hard, watchful, inclining his head towards the door. What was his name? Bill? Bob? It didn’t matter. The other, older, silent, worn down, might have been Maze’s father, but that didn’t matter either.

‘Where the fuck did you take him?’ Ramsay demanded.

‘What?’

‘Reek, where –’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mate, our new gaffers just want you disposed of, nowt personal, like.’

‘C’mon then, boys,’ Ramsay said, dropping his bag and reaching behind his back to where his gun was stuck into the waistband of his jeans. He’d strapped his hunting knife to his ankle under his trouser leg.

This was going to be fun.

###

Ramsay drove too fast along snow covered roads, the car skidding on ice, the headlights only showing a flurry of white.

North, his father had always said, in a crisis head north to his father’s safe-house.

So he drove all night, to the tip of North Yorkshire, along treacherous, deserted, ungritted roads to the country house his father had told him about.

He didn’t have a key, but he forced open the back door.

A big, silent, dark house. In the countryside. With no one for miles, not even the hounds to keep him entertained. At least it had a wine cellar, stocked with his father’s money in liquid form, and, clutching a bottle, he lay back on a dusty velvet couch to get some rest before he worked out what to do.

Smears of blood were still drying on his neck, and he’d left two broken bodies in his flat along with all the other crap he’d stashed there. The filth would be looking for him. There was no way back.

###

The calls Ramsay made to every contact he had didn’t get him anywhere, either they didn’t answer or hung up on him. They’d cut him loose. He screamed into so many answering machines he lost count, flinging his phone at the wall and having to piece it back together.

The beigeness of the house set his nerves on edge. He stood at the massive picture window, looked out at the lawn, the sky, wanted to howl at the moon, but he just downed another bottle of wine. Lights would have been too big a risk, so he lived in darkness, lived off the shitty out-of-date ready meals in the freezer. There was no computer, but he checked the news on his phone, saw his manic-looking mugshot plastered all over the BBC.

Hours fell into days, days fell into weeks, till he lost track. Then his phone rang. Rang for the first time since he made his strategic retreat. No one he knew would be careless enough to give it to the police.

‘Yeah?’ he said, answering it.

‘Ramsay Bolton?’

‘That’s me.’

‘My name’s Yara Greyjoy, I think you’ve met my brother.’

‘Where the fuck did you take –’

‘You have two choices: keep running like the fucking coward you are, or tell us your location. We’ll come get you.’

‘And why the fuck would I do that?’

‘I saw what was in your box. Saw your collection. You’re just a _pathetic_ joke. You just prey on the weak. I’m his sister, but I know what a bratty little cunt my brother was. And what a sick, masochistic fuck he is now. He was damaged, and now he’s destroyed. You’re just a fucking drama queen who hurts people because you don’t think you can keep them any other way. And you’re right. And I don’t think you’ll be able to resist knowing what happens to him. You’re off your fucking head, and I don’t think you’ll be able to let him go.’

He looked down at his fake passport laid on the table next to a bottle of old wine. He couldn’t even read the label. He’d always wanted to go to Thailand, all those pretty ladyboys, chicks with dicks they didn’t even want. They’d be so grateful for him and his gelding knife. _Call her bluff,_ he told himself, _tell her to fuck right off. Hang up the fucking phone._

Reek was just meat, rotten, stinking meat.

Instead he said: ‘You can act as high and mighty as you want, but you din’t protect Theon when he was a bairn, and you was long gone by the time I had him.’

Silence.

‘You still there? Or you gonna just rock back and forth and cry like your whiny little bitch of a brother? Oh, he in’t your brother anymore is he? He’s not even a man. He’s just a _thing_. An _it_. Wanna hear how it begged? _Begged_ for me to screw it, to hack at it, to make it forget. Begged for –’

‘Just shut your fucking mouth! He was beautiful and now he’s just a fucking ghost! I’m gonna rip out your fucking tongue! I’ll –’

And Ramsay laughed. ‘It only talked about you once. Said it’d gotten to feel you up, said you used to bring it sweets like its pedo uncle. Said you fucked off to the army and just left it there. Said you was worse than me ’cuz least I stayed, least I –’

‘Shut your filthy fucking mouth!’

And Ramsay just kept laughing. ‘I made it promise, made it swear it’d top itsen if it ever got taken from me. To stop being such a fucking wuss and cut deep enough to slice open a vein and end its miserable, pathetic little life. I bet it’s fading away. Won’t eat unless I hand-feed it, won’t sleep without me above it, won’t even _breathe_ unless I tell it to. It even still alive? You can’t handle _Reek_ , can you? You thought it’d be so fucking grateful, but it just _pines,_ and hacks at itself, and waits for me.’

‘You gonna come or not, you fucking psycho? We know everything you’ve done, what ya did to Ned Stark, all the people you’ve hurt, the lives you’ve destroyed. We’ll take you to Theon, God help us, or you’ll never see him again, never know what happens. And if you don’t come, he wins, one way or another he gets away. I don’t think you can stand that, can you? Losing to him.’

Ramsay held the passport, the same shade of red as the wine.

He dropped it into the bin.

‘Seventy-six Golden Egg Lane, Porls Green. Come and get me, ready or not.’

He hung up.

###

‘Bolivia,’ Ramsay muttered as he stood in the doorway. ‘I shoulda gone to fucking Bolivia.’ Because it was like waiting for the shootout in Butch and Sundance. Except there wouldn’t be a shootout, because then he’d kill the fuckers and never find Reek. But he gripped his father’s gun, his hunting knife’s sheath pushed into the back of his jeans. No point making it too easy for them.

Outside, bright sun glinted off snow, the sky the clearest blue he’d ever seen, stretching away forever. His breath drifted away like steam.

Slowly, slowly a big, boxy car ambled up the road, snow flattening under its tyres.

It was the most pathetic car chase in history, and as it slid to a halt on the white driveway Ramsay laughed, laughed while three people got out of the shiny blue car. Jon and Robb he recognised, and wasn’t surprised. The woman with mousy brown hair but a sour expression and steel in her eyes must be Yara. She looked like Reek might have if he’d had a backbone.

‘Get on with it,’ Ramsay yelled, ‘it’s fucking freezing!’

And he kept laughing once they had him on the ground in the snow, soaking through his clothes while they took his weapons, while they patted him down. The air knocked out of him as Jon, the pretty one with all the hair, gave him a vicious kick right to the balls.

They all laid into him then, boots and fists, and Jesus Christ a fucking tyre iron. The snow turned red, creeping away from him with the snap of bones.

They yelled, their voices merging, overlapping, but he picked out bits that just made him laugh harder:

‘– was my baby brother you psycho rapist cunt –’

‘– for what you did to our father and brothers and –’

‘– cut off your dick and burn you alive for –’

But they bundled him, a crumpled, sodden rag of black and white and red into the boot of their car, hot and stuffy. It stank of mud and shit and the pain washed over him like the sea. He tried to keep his head above the waves as they lapped at him.

And, through it all, he laughed.

Until the blackness took him.

###

Grey. Everything was always grey. Wherever the fuck they’d put Ramsay, the thick, solid walls were made of rough grey blocks, the floor grey concrete. There was no window in the small room, only a naked, flickering yellow bulb that swayed overhead, turned on and off at random times. On the floor was a blanket, and a bucket placed in the corner for him to shit and piss in that they rarely emptied.

Twice a day he heard muffled steps trudging down stairs, before the metal door opened. Each time a bowl of slop that almost passed for food, along with a bottle of water, were pushed inside by two people he didn't know. Their faces changed, but always one pointed a gun at him in case he moved. They never said a word. Behind them was just another grey wall.

Above, he sometimes heard banging, yelling, screams, desperate sounds but he couldn’t make out any words. Language faded to ‘hunger’ and ‘cold’ and ‘dark’.

Crusted with blood, his bones healed at the wrong angles, clicked when he moved. Dragging himself along the rough floor at first, scraping off more skin, till he could stand, could pace, back and forth, back and forth, muttering to himself.

He lost track of time. Days, weeks, months. It blended together into a meaningless mass. He slept, he scratched messages – saying ‘Ramsay woz ere’ – into the walls till his nails came away from his fingers. He punched the walls then, banged his head against them, the thuds ringing in his ears. His own stench overwhelming, his filthy clothes stiff. The air damp and musty. Stuffy and suffocating. He grew thin, forced himself to do sit ups, push ups, to prepare, bones scratching together as the room filled with the stink of sweat. And still, alone in the dark, in the silence, he laughed.

The light flickered on and he blinked into it. The hatch in the door creaked open, someone checking where he was, then slammed shut. He knew to stay back or it would be another day without food. But food already? He was still hoarding the last batch.

The lock turned, the door started to open. ‘C’mon in!’ he called, his lips chapped, voice cracking, but he affected his most cheerful, gloating tone. ‘Sit down, stay awhile, I don’t get many visitors these days, I –’

And a figure stepped from the shadows into the room. And there it was, finally, finally. The door slammed shut and locked behind it.

‘ _Reek_ ,’ he breathed out the word like a sigh. It was cleaner, its silvery hair shorn close to its scalp, its jeans and hoodie well cared for by someone. But it was even thinner, a skeleton, shivering down to its bones as it hunched over. Its hands and clean-shaven face covered in fresh scratches and cuts, another finger gone, and its haphazard teeth showing as its mouth fell open. But it was Reek, its scars severe against the paleness of its skin.

‘They brought you here for m-me,’ Reek said, voice shaking, as wracked with tremors as its body. ‘They wanted to kill you – kill you slowly. But I begged – begged and pleaded. You taught me – taught me too well. So they said I can keep – keep you. But you can’t hurt anyone else, not ever again.’ Its hunched back straightened as much as it could, and it glanced at Ramsay’s face before its gaze skittered away. ‘And if you kill m-me they’ll shoot you through the hatch in the door. Leave us down here together to rot. They told m-me – they won’t save me again. So you’re never getting out of here. But you – you know what I need.’

Reek tossed Ramsay’s shank onto the floor between them where it clattered then stilled.

Ramsay grabbed it with its promise of red. Stood. Smiled.

And, hollow voice filling up the empty spaces, Ramsay said: ‘I knew you’d come back to me.’

**_The End_**

**Author's Note:**

> The end is inspired by a 1988 Dutch film, The Vanishing, hence the address of the country house, and the 2003 South Korean movie Oldboy, which is as fucked up as my story. I take comfort in that. The originals, not the remakes.
> 
> And I quote a few films, including Taxi Driver, but I mostly ripped off Reservoir Dogs, Stuck In The Middle With You by Stealers Wheel, and this scene:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=736CcdvsR0g
> 
> So I’m blaming Tarantino for that part. The rest is on me.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Nor Iron Bars A Cage: A Happy Ending](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595049) by [HappyDagger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyDagger/pseuds/HappyDagger)
  * [Nor Iron Bars A Cage: Cover Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944702) by [Chronicler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler), [Yulaty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yulaty/pseuds/Yulaty)




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